Creative's new 5.1 soundcards......are they essentially SB Live's + Dxr3's (sans video)??

[pg22]

So I'm just wondering about Creative's new line of soundcards...and like someone mentioned in another post, Creative is rather vague in general regarding some of their products.

Im guessing these new 5.1 soundcards are simply the same old SB Live plus the ability to decode Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC3). So it would essentially be an SB Live with half of the ability of a Dxr3 DVD decoder card, correct?

 

[pg22]

Dammit Jim...I need more power!!

 

[pg22]

hmm..quite possibly the most popular thread of all time....


(one last bump)

 

[Soccerman]

do you have a link?

 

[schreee]

The Dxr3 (or most/any other hardware decoders, and many set-top dvd players) doesn't actually have the ability to decode dolby digital. It just has the ability to pass on the digital signal to an external decoder (like a receiver, or the DTT2500 speaker system).

As far as I can tell, the SB Live 5.1 does actually have the ability to decode the signal, and so presumably has 6 speaker outputs, one for each of the discrete channels. I don't know if the card actually has 6 outputs on it, though, or if it's handled in some proprietary way (like the 4-speaker digital DIN connection they had on the normal Live!'s), or what.

 

[Soccerman]

hmm.. too bad Aureal didn't go under.. we would have had it from the SQ3500 already