Doom3's 5.1 audio...analog or digital? And some soundcard questions...

[kami]

Well we all know how Doom3's audio is going to be 5.1...now will this be TRUE 5.1 Dolby Digital, only available for through a digital out from your soundcard to your receiver? or is this just going to be EAX or something like that and support analog soundcard outputs? AFAIK, no current computer games support true Dolby 5.1?

Next question...sound cards...
Is the Audigy worth an extra $25-$30 over a Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo II? I know the Hercules card has toslink digital out which I can connect to my receiver, but what does the Audigy have for digital out? Coaxial digital out or is it some stupid proprietary connector?

I am upgrading from an old Diamond Monstersound MX300 (Aureal Vortex2)...it never even had official Win2k drivers...it works OK in WinXP but only 2 channel mode and many features are missing.

 

[Adul]

I'd rather go with the hercules card for sound quality. Not sure about audigy's connector though

 

[nightowl]

DD 5.1 outputs can be both analog and digital. It is just that a digital output of DD 5.1 needs to be processed by a decoder to turn it into an analog signal for the speakers. This can be done by either the sound card, the speakers, or a receiver. Many cards that have a 5.1 output process the DD signal and covert it to analog so that you can use normal computer speakers without the need for an external decoder. EAX is more like the virtual surround that is applied to a stereo signal to simulate surround sound. Also, is the audio in Doom 3 going to be real time DD 5.1 encoded? I am assuming so, and will it need so type of sound processor along the lines of the nForce audio MCP.

 

[kami]

Originally posted by: nightowl
DD 5.1 outputs can be both analog and digital. It is just that a digital output of DD 5.1 needs to be processed by a decoder to turn it into an analog signal for the speakers. This can be done by either the sound card, the speakers, or a receiver. Many cards that have a 5.1 output process the DD signal and covert it to analog so that you can use normal computer speakers without the need for an external decoder. EAX is more like the virtual surround that is applied to a stereo signal to simulate surround sound. Also, is the audio in Doom 3 going to be real time DD 5.1 encoded? I am assuming so, and will it need so type of sound processor along the lines of the nForce audio MCP.

Yeah I know DD5.1 can be analog, I just meant if it was gonna be a pass-through type thing where Doom3's engine essentially gets the sound data, then sends it to an external decoder to be sent to the 5.1 channels, OR if it requires a card that decodes 5.1 itself (and I don't think the Hercules card does this, am I right?)

 

[Soccerman]

well I didn't know that Doom 3 is going to be 5.1.. how the hell are they going to do that?? does that mean that the doom 3 software will encode 6 channels into DD in realtime, or do they actually think Creative is creative enough to think of doing it in hardware (it would also require Hercules and Turtle Beach to release cards based on faster Cirrus Logic chips which have DD in hardware support)?

I think they're going to let the soundcard drivers do the encoding, while the software pumps out up to 5.1 channels (can this be done with just a simple directsound output, or waveout? in other words, what API are they using to accomplish this?). that is, if you opt for the digital output. otherwise there'd be no encoding (due to analogue output and a 5.1 channel non-encoded source).

I rather think that they won't output directly to DD, but they will have 5.1 channels. that way they only have to worry about slowing the computer down when dealing with this encoding nonsense (which the nForce is supposed to be able to do in hardware), which will slow all other cards like the Audigy, SBLive, SBLive 5.1, TB Santa Cruz and Herc GTXP because they would have to do it in software.

 

[kami]

bump

 

[Brian48]

I sold my Fortissimo II recently. It was a good sound card, but I would never choose it over my Audigy for gaming.

 

[rocketbubba]

I have never compared the Herc with the Audigy, but the price did make a difference for me - I bought a Herc. I don't think there's another sound card in the Herc's pricerange with optical I/O capabilities. The Audigy is probably better, but it was way more expensive than my Herc and I doubt that it's really that much better. I'm not a real big Creative fan to begin with, so my opinion is a little slanted anyway.

 

[BD2003]

I'd assume all 3 ways.

Since (I assume, common sense) to even encode the 5.1 stream it would have to be made umcompressed first, it'd be silly not to create functionality to just output the raw streams to 5.1 speakers. That should cover those with 5.1 soundcards.

But then again it could be software encoded, and then anyone with spdif could output it to their decoder, if they have one. Which would be a fairly heavy burden.

And last, and definitely the best way to go, they could have the nforce encode it for them. (Yay for nforce! 😀)

Is it just me, or does it seem that Directsound3D and EAX are going the way of the dinosaur? Most of the newest games just havent been supporting them.