I would like a nice, clean, connection from a PC sound card to my home audio receiver

[pg22]

Basically, I would like to get rid of my SB Live 5.1, and the millions of cables I have running from it to my home audio receiver. What I would like is a sound card that would only require only a digital optical cable going from my PC to my receiver. Much nicer and cleaner

Does Creative offer a card like this? If not, who then? Thanks much!

 

[biostud]

HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 GOLD/Dolby Digital Live

 

[Excelsior]

The chaintech 7.1 from newegg for $24 dollars will do just that.

Link!

 

[pg22]

Are each of those worthy sound cards? I am primarily doing this to clean up space but I want good quality 5.1 sound for my PC games.

 

[biostud]

review


So does the HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold compete with the Sound Blaster series? Hell yeah! A great card with great quality and a low price tag. Im pretty surprised how good it is. Even a driver for the Microsoft Windows x64 is available. Im very happy to see this player in the game after all, the competition between the manufacturers is only good for us. More competitors the better. The HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 performed perfect. It delivered all the goods without problems. If you have a Dolby decoder/receiver and good speakers set you should consider buying this card. Maybe HiTech isnt that famous but they proved themselves with this product. Maybe it doesnt support EAX Advanced HD 4.0 but who needs it while you got Dolby Digital Live and 24bits/96KHz?

Since this card really impressed me I decided to give it our golden award and recommend it to you. Grab it while its hot!

Pros:
* Great sound quality.
* Very low CPU usage.
* Dolby Digital Live encoder with DTS,DTS-ES,DD-EX support.
* Price.
* Not a Creative Labs product.

Cons:
* Availability

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: pg22
Are each of those worthy sound cards? I am primarily doing this to clean up space but I want good quality 5.1 sound for my PC games.

Oh..for your games...

"Maybe it doesnt support EAX Advanced HD 4.0"

He basically does need to go ahead and get a creative labs card. He says its for his games.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The HDA card will encode game audio to dolby 5.1, no Creative card does that yet. No other card period except nforce2 motherboards with SoundStorm.

So, Creative has EAX 4 but requires analog connections for game audio, HDA lacks EAX but has Dolby Live encoding.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: pg22
Are each of those worthy sound cards? I am primarily doing this to clean up space but I want good quality 5.1 sound for my PC games.

Oh..for your games...

"Maybe it doesnt support EAX Advanced HD 4.0"

He basically does need to go ahead and get a creative labs card. He says its for his games.

it's not like it can't play games, and it supports up to EAX 2.0

from the review:
Gaming
I tried Doom 3 with the Dolby Digital Live and its just perfect! Forget the Analog speakers, Dolby is the real deal. The sounds are so realistic, the neighbors almost called the cops because of the great quality. I tried some EAX games and everything seems to work perfectly. It seems all the games are working great in both Analog and Digital mode but I must say that the Dolby Digital produced the best sound quality.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: biostud

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: pg22
Are each of those worthy sound cards? I am primarily doing this to clean up space but I want good quality 5.1 sound for my PC games.

Oh..for your games...

"Maybe it doesnt support EAX Advanced HD 4.0"

He basically does need to go ahead and get a creative labs card. He says its for his games.

it's not like it can't play games, and it supports up to EAX 2.0

from the review:
Gaming
I tried Doom 3 with the Dolby Digital Live and its just perfect! Forget the Analog speakers, Dolby is the real deal. The sounds are so realistic, the neighbors almost called the cops because of the great quality. I tried some EAX games and everything seems to work perfectly. It seems all the games are working great in both Analog and Digital mode but I must say that the Dolby Digital produced the best sound quality.

Oh my bad, didnt know it supported EAX 2.0

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: biostud
it's not like it can't play games, and it supports up to EAX 2.0

from the review:
Gaming
I tried Doom 3 with the Dolby Digital Live and its just perfect! Forget the Analog speakers, Dolby is the real deal. The sounds are so realistic, the neighbors almost called the cops because of the great quality. I tried some EAX games and everything seems to work perfectly. It seems all the games are working great in both Analog and Digital mode but I must say that the Dolby Digital produced the best sound quality.

Dolby is not going to improve your sound quality, as all it does is compress the game audio to a 640 kilobit/s stream using a lossy compression scheme.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I had the Chaintech AV-710 and it was a great card for music and movies. Games were not so great though as I had to play in either 7 channel stereo or some Pro Logic mode.

I recently upgraded to the X-Mystique and it's working great.

Availability isn't a problem anymore. You can even get it at newegg.

I also recently learned about turtle beach's new DDL offering. I don't know anything about it really other than it, along with the X-Mystique are the only cards I know of that will give you surround sound through digital.

My first set of drivers for the X-Mystique was a little buggy, but the current set available here is working great for me.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: biostud
It seems all the games are working great in both Analog and Digital mode but I must say that the Dolby Digital produced the best sound quality.

Dolby is not going to improve your sound quality, as all it does is compress the game audio to a 640 kilobit/s stream using a lossy compression scheme.

True, but the game audio goes through different code paths in the soundcard drivers for analog and dolby output and sends the results via DAC vs. digital outputs to the receiver, either or both of which can affect sound quality.

 

[pg22]

If I get the Turtle Beach, will I be losing out on EAX positional audio?

 

[pg22]

b0mp

 

[Auric]

Live! has digital output, but electrical, not optical. It is easy 'nuff to DIY a coaxial cable to the onboard pins. Otherwise, a bracket can be purchased for both coaxial and optical. I had a Hoontech one which cost about $12 a few years ago. Audigy series would be better for games. Prolly best to just get an Audigy 2 of some sort (Value for basic connectivity) and use the coaxial output as brackets may be difficult to find or else relatively costly from Creative. The HDA seems rather overpriced (twice the cost of a basic Audigy?!). The Turtle Beach looks promising for integrated optical and digital encoding if full EAX support is not crucial. I reckon positional audio is not lost, just effects.

 

[Goi]

If you need it for 5.1 gaming then you're outta luck. Every gaming soundcard I know requires analog cables for that, except the SoundStorm, which does DD 5.1 encoding on the fly. Those don't make it to discrete soundcards.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Goi
If you need it for 5.1 gaming then you're outta luck. Every gaming soundcard I know requires analog cables for that, except the SoundStorm, which does DD 5.1 encoding on the fly. Those don't make it to discrete soundcards.

Are you saying the X-Mystique and Montego don't offer DD encoding?
I'm confused about what you are talking about.

 

[Quasmo]

hey yoyoyo I have the chaintech... is it going to work with my z680s? To say watch movies in 5.1 and stuff like that?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Quasmo
hey yoyoyo I have the chaintech... is it going to work with my z680s? To say watch movies in 5.1 and stuff like that?

Yep (I think so), it passed the AC3 stream just fine to my receiver for DDEX.

Games will be limited to 5 channel stereo or Prologic though.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: Goi
If you need it for 5.1 gaming then you're outta luck. Every gaming soundcard I know requires analog cables for that, except the SoundStorm, which does DD 5.1 encoding on the fly. Those don't make it to discrete soundcards.

Are you saying the X-Mystique and Montego don't offer DD encoding?
I'm confused about what you are talking about.

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that such soundcards already existed. My bad.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Goi

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: Goi
If you need it for 5.1 gaming then you're outta luck. Every gaming soundcard I know requires analog cables for that, except the SoundStorm, which does DD 5.1 encoding on the fly. Those don't make it to discrete soundcards.

Are you saying the X-Mystique and Montego don't offer DD encoding?
I'm confused about what you are talking about.

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that such soundcards already existed. My bad.

Oh that's cool. I didn't know until a couple months ago. They're quite a new thing, especially in the US.

 

[Goi]

How's their general sound quality compared to the Envy24HT/Audigy2 soundcards though? It would be a pity if they had DDL capabilities but sounded as bad as onboard sound. Any reviews on this as well as CPU usage while encoding?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Goi
How's their general sound quality compared to the Envy24HT/Audigy2 soundcards though? It would be a pity if they had DDL capabilities but sounded as bad as onboard sound. Any reviews on this as well as CPU usage while encoding?

I think there's a link to an article about it in Peripherals.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: biostud
it's not like it can't play games, and it supports up to EAX 2.0

Have you tried the x-mystique with BF2 yet? BF2's audio setup contains a choice between "software" and "hardware". Choosing "hardware" acts up something awful with my setup... Probably doesn't matter though?

Also worth mentioning: An updated 64-bit driver is in the works. A week or so ago they told me "in two weeks", so I'm keeping my fingers crossed... (the current one doesn't support 5.1)

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: BikeDude
Have you tried the x-mystique with BF2 yet? BF2's audio setup contains a choice between "software" and "hardware". Choosing "hardware" acts up something awful with my setup... Probably doesn't matter though?

I was wrong... The "Hardware" setting is where the surround sound is... If I switch my card into stereo mode I can use the "Hardware" setting, but that's hardly useful... (I just want surround) This is using the newest 32-bit driver found over at hidiaudio.com (5.12.01.0046.4).