Just finished hooking up my HT to my PC

[EstoyLoco]

man is soundstorm beautiful 🙂

5.1 dolby digital goodness

 

[LucJoe]

I've been hearing all this buzz about soundstorm lately.. what exactly is it? (besides the obvious)

I know it's only in nForce2 mobos, I have a 8RDA+, do i have soundstorm?


edit:

"The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge which gives it onboard LAN as well as 6channel nVidia soundstorm (it actually lacks soundstorm certification, but that is a technicality, hardware and sound quality of this board sound are IDENTICAL to those of any officially certified soundstorm board)"

What does this mean? I don't have any of the connectors on my board, only 3 (speakers, line in, and mic i think) but the second one doubles as a rear speaker connection. Also, my sound card makes weird static noises sometimes, is there a known issue with 8RDA+ integrated sound?

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: LucJoe
I've been hearing all this buzz about soundstorm lately.. what exactly is it? (besides the obvious)

I know it's only in nForce2 mobos, I have a 8RDA+, do i have soundstorm?


edit:

"The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge which gives it onboard LAN as well as 6channel nVidia soundstorm (it actually lacks soundstorm certification, but that is a technicality, hardware and sound quality of this board sound are IDENTICAL to those of any officially certified soundstorm board)"

What does this mean? I don't have any of the connectors on my board, only 3 (speakers, line in, and mic i think) but the second one doubles as a rear speaker connection. Also, my sound card makes weird static noises sometimes, is there a known issue with 8RDA+ integrated sound?

MCP-T southbridge means that the SoundStorm APU is present. Whether or not your board has the soddered-on connectors to fully take advantage of it is another matter. 🙂

The SoundStorm's claim to fame is it's ability to take the positional audio generated by DirectSound3d and EAX and encode it on-the-fly to Dolby Digital 5.1 to be transmitted digitally to an off-board processor (Receiver). No other sound chip including the Audigy(2|ZX) can do this.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: TerryMathews

Originally posted by: LucJoe
I've been hearing all this buzz about soundstorm lately.. what exactly is it? (besides the obvious)

I know it's only in nForce2 mobos, I have a 8RDA+, do i have soundstorm?


edit:

"The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge which gives it onboard LAN as well as 6channel nVidia soundstorm (it actually lacks soundstorm certification, but that is a technicality, hardware and sound quality of this board sound are IDENTICAL to those of any officially certified soundstorm board)"

What does this mean? I don't have any of the connectors on my board, only 3 (speakers, line in, and mic i think) but the second one doubles as a rear speaker connection. Also, my sound card makes weird static noises sometimes, is there a known issue with 8RDA+ integrated sound?

MCP-T southbridge means that the SoundStorm APU is present. Whether or not your board has the soddered-on connectors to fully take advantage of it is another matter. 🙂

The SoundStorm's claim to fame is it's ability to take the positional audio generated by DirectSound3d and EAX and encode it on-the-fly to Dolby Digital 5.1 to be transmitted digitally to an off-board processor (Receiver). No other sound chip including the Audigy(2|ZX) can do this.

The Soundstorm doesn't do anything that the Audigy 2 EX or ZS can't do. Period.

 

[Bonesdad]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: TerryMathews

Originally posted by: LucJoe
I've been hearing all this buzz about soundstorm lately.. what exactly is it? (besides the obvious)

I know it's only in nForce2 mobos, I have a 8RDA+, do i have soundstorm?


edit:

"The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge which gives it onboard LAN as well as 6channel nVidia soundstorm (it actually lacks soundstorm certification, but that is a technicality, hardware and sound quality of this board sound are IDENTICAL to those of any officially certified soundstorm board)"

What does this mean? I don't have any of the connectors on my board, only 3 (speakers, line in, and mic i think) but the second one doubles as a rear speaker connection. Also, my sound card makes weird static noises sometimes, is there a known issue with 8RDA+ integrated sound?

MCP-T southbridge means that the SoundStorm APU is present. Whether or not your board has the soddered-on connectors to fully take advantage of it is another matter. 🙂

The SoundStorm's claim to fame is it's ability to take the positional audio generated by DirectSound3d and EAX and encode it on-the-fly to Dolby Digital 5.1 to be transmitted digitally to an off-board processor (Receiver). No other sound chip including the Audigy(2|ZX) can do this.

The Soundstorm doesn't do anything that the Audigy 2 EX or ZS can't do. Period.

Except be a LOT less expensive

 

[Bonesdad]

SORRY...dont know what happened...only clicked reply one time...

 

[Bonesdad]

Again, sorry.

 

[UlricT]

Nebor's become a Creatidiot now! Good move nebor 😛

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: Bonesdad

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: TerryMathews

Originally posted by: LucJoe
I've been hearing all this buzz about soundstorm lately.. what exactly is it? (besides the obvious)

I know it's only in nForce2 mobos, I have a 8RDA+, do i have soundstorm?


edit:

"The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge which gives it onboard LAN as well as 6channel nVidia soundstorm (it actually lacks soundstorm certification, but that is a technicality, hardware and sound quality of this board sound are IDENTICAL to those of any officially certified soundstorm board)"

What does this mean? I don't have any of the connectors on my board, only 3 (speakers, line in, and mic i think) but the second one doubles as a rear speaker connection. Also, my sound card makes weird static noises sometimes, is there a known issue with 8RDA+ integrated sound?

MCP-T southbridge means that the SoundStorm APU is present. Whether or not your board has the soddered-on connectors to fully take advantage of it is another matter. 🙂

The SoundStorm's claim to fame is it's ability to take the positional audio generated by DirectSound3d and EAX and encode it on-the-fly to Dolby Digital 5.1 to be transmitted digitally to an off-board processor (Receiver). No other sound chip including the Audigy(2|ZX) can do this.

The Soundstorm doesn't do anything that the Audigy 2 EX or ZS can't do. Period.

Except be a LOT less expensive

amen. i wouldn't pay that much money for the Audigy 2

 

[LucJoe]

Originally posted by: TerryMathews

Originally posted by: LucJoe
I've been hearing all this buzz about soundstorm lately.. what exactly is it? (besides the obvious)

I know it's only in nForce2 mobos, I have a 8RDA+, do i have soundstorm?


edit:

"The 8RDA+ has the MCP-T southbridge which gives it onboard LAN as well as 6channel nVidia soundstorm (it actually lacks soundstorm certification, but that is a technicality, hardware and sound quality of this board sound are IDENTICAL to those of any officially certified soundstorm board)"

What does this mean? I don't have any of the connectors on my board, only 3 (speakers, line in, and mic i think) but the second one doubles as a rear speaker connection. Also, my sound card makes weird static noises sometimes, is there a known issue with 8RDA+ integrated sound?

MCP-T southbridge means that the SoundStorm APU is present. Whether or not your board has the soddered-on connectors to fully take advantage of it is another matter. 🙂

The SoundStorm's claim to fame is it's ability to take the positional audio generated by DirectSound3d and EAX and
encode it on-the-fly to Dolby Digital 5.1 to be transmitted digitally to an off-board processor (Receiver). No other sound chip including the Audigy(2|ZX) can do this.

So, if my board doesn't have these connectors (but definitely has SoundStorm), is there any way to add them in?

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: UlricT
Nebor's become a Creatidiot now! Good move nebor 😛

Man, people on these forums are touchy! 🙂 What If I said, "Well, I use an Athlon XP 1700+ in my computer" and everyone might yell "RACIST!" 😛 Or would that be Computerist?

 

[UlricT]

Originally posted by: Nebor
The Soundstorm doesn't do anything that the Audigy 2 EX or ZS can't do. Period.

THIS is what I was talking about... these kind of statements are typical of the guy, except thta it used to be about the Geforce FX. The irony of the situation is... he is switching from an nvidiot to suporting creative! (talk abour from bad to worse!). I suspect he just likes to jerk people around 😀

/EDIT: AND his statement is NOT true... in case you missed that!

 

[EstoyLoco]

I wasn't aware that the Audigy is capable of encoding in DD5.1.
Besides why would anyone pay an extra $100+ for a soundcard alone if you own an AMD Atlon XP when you can get it on the MB. Only reason I would think is if you owned an Intel CPU.

but yes Soundstorm is the APU instructions that encode any sound signal into DD5.1 and you can use a standard home theater receiver with DD5.1 support to play it...

However, in order to take advantage of DD5.1, you need to have SPDIF outputs, either COAX / Optical on the MB, very few have them built on the motherboard (ASUS has on the MB), everyone else will use an ACR or PCI bracket with cable connector to the motherboard.

Soundstorm does also support up to 6 channel audio, but its not as impressive as DD5.1

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: LucJoe
So, if my board doesn't have these connectors (but definitely has SoundStorm), is there any way to add them in?

Theoretically, yes. If there isn't a header on the motherboard, you could theoretically still sodder onto the proper pins on the MCP-T to gain access to the SPDIF.

Hopefully, there's a header on the board even if the pins aren't soddered in. That will make your life much easier. Check your manual first. You'd be looking for Digital out, SPDIF, optical, or something along those lines.

And to the bigot/fanboy: The Live, Live 5.1, Audigy, Audigy 2, or Audigy 2 ZX cannot encode DD5.1. All it can output digitally is 2ch PCM.

That's why nForce > Creative Labs.

 

[jdogg707]

So tell me this, if he says his is better, and you say yours is better....who is the fanboy?

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: jdogg707
So tell me this, if he says his is better, and you say yours is better....who is the fanboy?

That's not what happened though. I said only nForce SoundStorm can encode EAX/DirectSound3d to DD5.1. He said there's nothing SoundStorm can do that Audigy can't. That's wrong IE factually incorrect.

The Audigy cannot do this. I know; I own one. The SoundStorm can. Again, I should know. I own one of those too. This doesn't make the Audigy any less of a card. The fact that you can plug a pair of headphones into the Audigy Drive and the computer mutes the speaker outputs and configures for headphones is uber-cool and very useful.

Not so useful for a HT computer though... Going out on a limb here, but a HT computer would probably benefit more from DD5.1 encoding. Seeing as that's the only efficient way to get information into a receiver that can output any real power.

*I know that there are some HT receivers that offer 6ch analog input. It's usually not as fully featured as the DD5.1/DTS decoding and a very hard-to-find feature that will limit your choices.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: TerryMathews

Originally posted by: jdogg707
So tell me this, if he says his is better, and you say yours is better....who is the fanboy?

That's not what happened though. I said only nForce SoundStorm can encode EAX/DirectSound3d to DD5.1. He said there's nothing SoundStorm can do that Audigy can't. That's wrong IE factually incorrect.

The Audigy cannot do this. I know; I own one. The SoundStorm can. Again, I should know. I own one of those too. This doesn't make the Audigy any less of a card. The fact that you can plug a pair of headphones into the Audigy Drive and the computer mutes the speaker outputs and configures for headphones is uber-cool and very useful.

Not so useful for a HT computer though... Going out on a limb here, but a HT computer would probably benefit more from DD5.1 encoding. Seeing as that's the only efficient way to get information into a receiver that can output any real power.

*I know that there are some HT receivers that offer 6ch analog input. It's usually not as fully featured as the DD5.1/DTS decoding and a very hard-to-find feature that will limit your choices.

Never claimed anything about the Audigy. Just talking about the Audigy 2 EX and Audigy 2 ZS.

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: TerryMathews

Originally posted by: jdogg707
So tell me this, if he says his is better, and you say yours is better....who is the fanboy?

That's not what happened though. I said only nForce SoundStorm can encode EAX/DirectSound3d to DD5.1. He said there's nothing SoundStorm can do that Audigy can't. That's wrong IE factually incorrect.

The Audigy cannot do this. I know; I own one. The SoundStorm can. Again, I should know. I own one of those too. This doesn't make the Audigy any less of a card. The fact that you can plug a pair of headphones into the Audigy Drive and the computer mutes the speaker outputs and configures for headphones is uber-cool and very useful.

Not so useful for a HT computer though... Going out on a limb here, but a HT computer would probably benefit more from DD5.1 encoding. Seeing as that's the only efficient way to get information into a receiver that can output any real power.

*I know that there are some HT receivers that offer 6ch analog input. It's usually not as fully featured as the DD5.1/DTS decoding and a very hard-to-find feature that will limit your choices.

Never claimed anything about the Audigy. Just talking about the Audigy 2 EX and Audigy 2 ZS.

They can't either. Even though it's against my principles to do research for other people, I made an exception.

SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum PRO specifications. Do a find on the word encode. Notice how it's never mentioned along with Dobly Digital 5.1, DTS, etc. All the Audigy cards can do is decode DD5.1/DTS.

Also, you should keep in mind that the Audigy and Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS are so similar that their drivers and software are interchangable. The Audigy doesn't (currently) have a hack to support 6.1 analog out, but I think it's more due to people not caring than anything else.