Gigabyte's P35 with ALC889A

[Eso Rimmer]

I want to use Logitech Z-5500 conected through S/PDIF the same way like with my old "dolby digital live" capable nvidia soundstorm. So my question is whether Gigabyte's P35 mainboards are capable of realtime AC3/DTS encoding. I mean the situation when you have SPDIF connected 5.1 speakers and you play for example stereo MP3. Will these mainboards convert signal to 5.1 AC3/DTS compressed or it will stay in uncompressed stereo PCM (resulting in playing only front satelites)? Please can someone confirm/disprove this?

 

[drakore]

Well i have no real answer to your question... but i do have a comment

you shouldn't be using the optical connection between your computer and Z-5500's, you should be using the 3 phono connectors

 

[Eso Rimmer]

I use digital coax connection and I don't see any benefit in using analog 3x jack connection. The sound is noise free with coax/optic compared to analog connection because sound is transfered as data and decoded by Z-5500 itself so you don't need any high quality soundcard and well shielded wires. And you have only 1 cable instead of 3...

 

[dandragonrage]

ALC889A has DTS Connect.

 

[dandragonrage]

Double post

 

[Eso Rimmer]

To dandragonrage:
Thanks for your reply. Did you try it personally? Because I did little bit of googling and found this user review for GA-MA69G-S3H. It's mainboard for AMD but it's using the same sound chip, so there should be no difference with P35's. Here is the original text:

Cons: Misrepresentation by Gigabyte. As it turns out DTS Connect was advertised for this board on Gigabyte's product website. However, if you look at it now it seems they have removed it. If you google the product you will notice that gigabyte's link still has the residual information stating the board has DTS Connect. Anyways lowered rating due to poor and terrible customer service that cannot answer a simple question.

Other Thoughts: Here's a chat log of support: Answer : the application will need to be written for it in order to use the feature. Such as the DVD software which the application is actually written for it. Windows Media player is not written to support DTS Question : Yes the SPDIF output does work and it is enabled. But the board does not have the advertised DTS Connect Feature. This requires driver/software to be installed and it came with none. Like I said, it output DTS when playing DVD via SPDIF output and receiver shows DTS. However all other audio is coming out PCM Stereo. DTS connect is supposed to output 7.1 audio via one digital cable outputting DTS to the receiver for all audio/media not just DVD's. Answer : If you are using the SPID connection you will need to enable the SPDIF under the audio property manager. From there it is configure through your receiver.

 

[mojolo]

the DQ6 and DS4 have DTS Connect, but not Dolby Digital Live. This is stated on their respective product pages.

none of the other GA-P35 boards have DTS Connect or Dolby Digital Live.

 

[drakore]

Yes i can comfirm that the DQ6 has DTS connect since i own one.

It is better to have your soundcard decoding the information instead of the z-5500 processor

 

[Eso Rimmer]

Hmm, that's weird because all P35s are using the same chip ALC889A, so how can be difference between DQ6, DS4 and other P35s?

Edit:
To drakore:
Why do you think it's better? When I connect Z-5500 to my soundstorm the digital is clearly better then analog, because there is no noise in audio signal.

 

[sprtfan]

Is DTS Connect just a way to bypass windows sound processing in kmixer? Similar to what people use a Chaintech AV710 sound card for or using exclusive mode in Vista?