Dolby Surround 2.0 compatible soundcard output??

[mALtbALz]

Here is my situation... I have a nice Home theatre computer, here are the specs:

T-Bird 850
256 megs of ram(pc 133)
ATI All-In-Wonder 7500
Hercules Maxi Sound MUSE sound card
Generic firewire card
Other assorted stuff...

I would like to buy a soundcard that can output Dolby Surround sound. Not the fancy 5.1 because my stereo is just Dolby 2.0
So, I have tried a Soundblaster Live value, the MUSE card, and a Aureal Vortex2. The Live and the Aureal cards locked my system up, and
the MUSE sound like crap when playing DVDs. The MUSE is great for 2 speaker music on winamp and whatnot, but the surroundsound stuff
like DVD or DIVX sounds kind of flat. I know it is NOT the stereo is itself, because on my standalone DVD player, movies sound great.

The reason for not using Creative labs cards is that I have an EPOX 8KTA3 motherboard with a VIA chipset, I have heard that Creatives cards are problematic with VIA chipsets.

Thanks for listening to my babbling, if you know of a good card that will output a Dolby 2.0 Surround compatible signal, let me know.
I appreciate any advice...

 

[DaiShan]

have you run through the forum checklist at the top of this page?

 

[mALtbALz]

You betcha. I left out some info as I fealt it didn't really factor into the whole "Sound Quality" nature of the post.
I'm really looking for Dolby 2.0 Surround compatibility as opposed to Tech support on Creative labs equiptment.

If it helps, I looked into my EPOX Motherboard manual BEFORE I installed all of the soundcards, I was careful to put the cards into slots that didn't share IRQ's. No matter what slots I put the different cards into, they(Live and Aureal) still caused a hard lockup. I have installed the newest possibl BIOS updates, drivers and MS WinXP updates as well. I am running WinXP PRO. What else did I leave out.... Oh, I have tried all these different cards from a clean format/reinstall of the OS as well.

 

[JustinLerner]

I don't know enough about what Dolby 2.0 Surround is, but I'm guessing from your description that it is Dolby Digital delivered through two speakers. Is this Dolby 2.0 Surround?

I don't know of any sound cards that fully support this standard, but I have and use a soundcard that supposedly supports Dolby ProLogic (analog) through 2 or 4 speakers and true 6 channel output, headphones in some combinations, Dolby Digital 4.1 with analog speakers or Digital 5.1 via digital coax out.

It seems to work fine with the audio playing back DVD's in stereo (at least from my perspective), but then I wouldn't think this setup could really compete with a standalone DVD player and stereo.

The soundcard: the Santa Cruz from Turtle Beach.

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Oh, another nice feature, this card has definitely better sound fidelity than the SB Live (according to input/output, noise, thd testing) and also COSTS less than the SB Live!