NVIDIA SoundStorm

[Insane3D]

The Audigy 2 encodes DD 5.1 realtime?

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: batmanuel
The reason most HTPC users like Soundstorm is that it will encode ALL of the PCs audio streams into DD, so CDs/MP3s/DivX can be sent to the receiver in AC3 instead of being output in analog form. This is especially useful if you are using your PC as a PVR box and use it to playback recorded television on a regular basis.

Why would you want to worsen your audio quality by compressing two channel audio such as CDs/MP3s/non AC3 DivX into lossy DD when you can simply send them uncompressed using a SPDIF output?

Why are DD signals compressed? A digital 6-channel audio signal is still relatively low-bandwidth compared to video/data. You would think that even a wireless connection could transmit this in real-time, and certainly a wired-solution like S/PDIF should

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan
Why are DD signals compressed? A digital 6-channel audio signal is still relatively low-bandwidth compared to video/data. You would think that even a wireless connection could transmit this in real-time, and certainly a wired-solution like S/PDIF should

DD is maximum 640 Kilobits/s, typically 448Kilobits/s, for 6 channels of audio using techniques similar to MP3. 2-channel CD audio is something like 1.4 megabits/s. While the cable should be able to handle higher bandwidths, it was never part of the standard and compression algorithms like DD/DTS were used for multi-channel audio. Until recently, Creative's method was the only way to carry 6 channels of uncompressed digital audio over a single cable.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: flashbacck
Mostly for the convenience of having 1 cable.

Why bother compressing, when you can simply pass the original two channel audio untouched through the same cable.

Also, all your audio streams will be upmixed to 5.1, whether you're watching TV, listening to mp3's or whatever.

Which many people will find annoying, especially for music. And any half-recent receiver will have various DSP effects or DDPL2 or DTS Neo to upmix the audio anyhow if you want.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Bigger picture: nVidia's APU isn't a PCI part, it's always lived on the southbridge natively. Making a PCI card out of it might not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Excellent point. I also wonder how much it would hogthe PCI bus if it was in a traditional PCI card format vs being mapped to the Hypertransport connection it's on now. I imagine real time DD encoding might eat some bandwidth...

Might be exactly the reason a Soundstorm card hasn't come out yet, as nVidia needs PCI-E to make it work.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Bigger picture: nVidia's APU isn't a PCI part, it's always lived on the southbridge natively. Making a PCI card out of it might not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Excellent point. I also wonder how much it would hogthe PCI bus if it was in a traditional PCI card format vs being mapped to the Hypertransport connection it's on now. I imagine real time DD encoding might eat some bandwidth...

Might be exactly the reason a Soundstorm card hasn't come out yet, as nVidia needs PCI-E to make it work.

No. It would not require any more bandwidth than the Audigy 2. It would be hardware-based, so the encoding would be done on the card itself.

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, time to ask the obvious question: with SoundStorm-equipped motherboards starting in the $55 area (Asus A7N266-VM/AA), why not just smack a used $15 Duron and a $30 stick of PC2100 onto one, and build your HTPC around that?

Optical and coaxial S/PDIF-outs, check.

Optional S-Video-out thingamabob, check.

Full SoundStorm APU, check.

Low price, long life, stability, passive cooling, check.

Fits microATX cases, check.

Supports 200MHz-based and 266MHz-based SocketA processors including Applebred and Thorton, check (BIOS 1007 gives them formal recognition).

You want a SoundStorm-equipped HTPC, then track down an A7N266-VM and buy it while you still can. Even with the CPU, heatsink and memory, I bet it would be cost-competitive with the PCI-SoundStorm card you're envisioning.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Bigger picture: nVidia's APU isn't a PCI part, it's always lived on the southbridge natively. Making a PCI card out of it might not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Excellent point. I also wonder how much it would hogthe PCI bus if it was in a traditional PCI card format vs being mapped to the Hypertransport connection it's on now. I imagine real time DD encoding might eat some bandwidth...

Might be exactly the reason a Soundstorm card hasn't come out yet, as nVidia needs PCI-E to make it work.

No. It would not require any more bandwidth than the Audigy 2. It would be hardware-based, so the encoding would be done on the card itself.

Ok, I'll ask you again. Does the Audigy 2 ENCODE DD 5.1 real time....I'm NOT talking about DECODING.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: Accord99

Originally posted by: batmanuel
The reason most HTPC users like Soundstorm is that it will encode ALL of the PCs audio streams into DD, so CDs/MP3s/DivX can be sent to the receiver in AC3 instead of being output in analog form. This is especially useful if you are using your PC as a PVR box and use it to playback recorded television on a regular basis.

Why would you want to worsen your audio quality by compressing two channel audio such as CDs/MP3s/non AC3 DivX into lossy DD when you can simply send them uncompressed using a SPDIF output?

Why are DD signals compressed? A digital 6-channel audio signal is still relatively low-bandwidth compared to video/data. You would think that even a wireless connection could transmit this in real-time, and certainly a wired-solution like S/PDIF should

Dolby Digital was designed as a surround sound format for movies and nothing else. An hour's worth of 6 channel uncompressed 16bit 48Khz audio would take about 2GB of space. That wouldn't leave much room on the disc for the video data.

I tried using the "digital" RCA mini jack from my friend's Audigy(1) with his Yamaha 4.1 system and got nothing because it was COMPLETELY PROPRIETARY!

There is nothing proprietary about Creative's digital out, except for the DIN connector that was on older Creative cards that was designed to send a discrete uncompressed multichannel digital surround sound signal when connected to their own speakers. An ability that still isn't available on any current computer hardware.

Mostly for the convenience of having 1 cable. Also, all your audio streams will be upmixed to 5.1, whether you're watching TV, listening to mp3's or whatever.

What receiver worth more than $10 can't expand stereo audio? There's nothing particularly unique about SS's expansion technique. There's no need for the DD encoding step, if you send the stereo signal digitally to your receiver and allow it to expand the channels rather than you allowing your sound card to expand the signal, then encode to DD, send digitally and then decod by the receiver.

Ok, I'll ask you again. Does the Audigy 2 ENCODE DD 5.1 real time....I'm NOT talking about DECODING.

No, it doesn't.

 

[Insane3D]

Hey Pariah, I didn't think it did unless something had changed recently... I knew you would pop in at some point.

 

[RanDum72]

It was configured properly. The speakers would not allow you to switch to digital mode because they couldn't find the signal, even though Creative's proprietary software was switched to "digital only". It was not acceptable to run a *long* optical cable from the Audigy Drive on the front. After further research (Audigy instructions), I found out that the digital non-optical signal from the Audigy is proprietary (only for Creative Inspire speakers).

Thats weird, I have used all incarnations of the Audigy (from the original to my present ZS) and I have used them all with AV receivers, from Kenwood to Yamaha and I've always been able to get digital output from connecting a mini-plug (from the Audigy ) to a regular RCA (to the digital coax in of the receiver).

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Bigger picture: nVidia's APU isn't a PCI part, it's always lived on the southbridge natively. Making a PCI card out of it might not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Excellent point. I also wonder how much it would hogthe PCI bus if it was in a traditional PCI card format vs being mapped to the Hypertransport connection it's on now. I imagine real time DD encoding might eat some bandwidth...

Might be exactly the reason a Soundstorm card hasn't come out yet, as nVidia needs PCI-E to make it work.

No. It would not require any more bandwidth than the Audigy 2. It would be hardware-based, so the encoding would be done on the card itself.

Ok, I'll ask you again. Does the Audigy 2 ENCODE DD 5.1 real time....I'm NOT talking about DECODING.

ENCODING RAW AUDIO CHANNELS TO DOLBY WITH A PROPOSED HARDWARE-BASED CARD WILL NOT AFFECT PCI BANDWIDTH BECAUSE ENCODING OCCURS WITHIN THE CARD ITSELF.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Ok, time to ask the obvious question: with SoundStorm-equipped motherboards starting in the $55 area (Asus A7N266-VM/AA), why not just smack a used $15 Duron and a $30 stick of PC2100 onto one, and build your HTPC around that?

Optical and coaxial S/PDIF-outs, check.

Optional S-Video-out thingamabob, check.

Full SoundStorm APU, check.

Low price, long life, stability, passive cooling, check.

Fits microATX cases, check.

Supports 200MHz-based and 266MHz-based SocketA processors including Applebred and Thorton, check (BIOS 1007 gives them formal recognition).

You want a SoundStorm-equipped HTPC, then track down an A7N266-VM and buy it while you still can. Even with the CPU, heatsink and memory, I bet it would be cost-competitive with the PCI-SoundStorm card you're envisioning.

On-chip Gigabit LAN - Nope

GB LAN is becoming a necessary for a heavily-used "media center", from which the rest of the devices in your household will store/access media.

If GB Lan is not on-chip, you'll need PCI-X to have enough bandwidth. If you have PCI-X, then you really need a 64-bit processor to use that bandwidth. If you have a 64-bit processor, then you have no SoundStorm

Also, how is it easy to passively-cool an AMD NF2 system?!

 

[Pariah]

If GB Lan is not on-chip, you'll need PCI-X to have enough bandwidth.

Theoretical GBit LAN can send 125MB/s which is below the the theoretical bandwidth of standard 32bit 33MHz PCI, 133MB/s. Real world GBit LAN is closer to 50 to 60MB/s max which is well within the capability of real world PCI which can be as high as 120MB/s.

If you have PCI-X, then you really need a 64-bit processor to use that bandwidth.

There is no correlation between 64bit CPU's and PCI-X performance. PCI-X has been around for years, long before the Opteron/A64 were released.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: Pariah

If GB Lan is not on-chip, you'll need PCI-X to have enough bandwidth.

Theoretical GBit LAN can send 125MB/s which is below the the theoretical bandwidth of standard 32bit 33MHz PCI, 133MB/s. Real world GBit LAN is closer to 50 to 60MB/s max which is well within the capability of real world PCI which can be as high as 120MB/s.

Think about it. Nearly all of the bandwidth is used by GB LAN. That leaves nothing for your other devices...not to mention DV CAPTURE HARDWARE!

HTPC's are already highly-integrated. Most of these devices are still using the PCI bus. You would really need an on-chip SATA solution to have an optimal HTPC...

Also, the reason why people's "real-world" estimates are so low is because *most* are using PCI NIC's.

 

[Nebor]

There are recievers with DIN inputs just like creative's digital speakers.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Ok, time to ask the obvious question: with SoundStorm-equipped motherboards starting in the $55 area (Asus A7N266-VM/AA), why not just smack a used $15 Duron and a $30 stick of PC2100 onto one, and build your HTPC around that?

Optical and coaxial S/PDIF-outs, check.

Optional S-Video-out thingamabob, check.

Full SoundStorm APU, check.

Low price, long life, stability, passive cooling, check.

Fits microATX cases, check.

Supports 200MHz-based and 266MHz-based SocketA processors including Applebred and Thorton, check (BIOS 1007 gives them formal recognition).

You want a SoundStorm-equipped HTPC, then track down an A7N266-VM and buy it while you still can. Even with the CPU, heatsink and memory, I bet it would be cost-competitive with the PCI-SoundStorm card you're envisioning.

On-chip Gigabit LAN - Nope

GB LAN is becoming a necessary for a heavily-used "media center", from which the rest of the devices in your household will store/access media.

If GB Lan is not on-chip, you'll need PCI-X to have enough bandwidth. If you have PCI-X, then you really need a 64-bit processor to use that bandwidth. If you have a 64-bit processor, then you have no SoundStorm

Also, how is it easy to passively-cool an AMD NF2 system?!

In the first place, it's not an nF2 system A7N266-VM/AA is nForce "classic". Secondly, where did we start talking about passively cooling the CPU, because I must've missed that. I don't see the point in trying to cool the system passively if it's going to have multiple hard drives that collectively make more noise than a quiet CPU fan does. A 7-volted Panaflo L1A would handle a Duron 600 easily, given a respectable heatsink.

There are legitimate (*cough*) uses for the power of native GbE, and I'm looking forward to getting a K8N-E Deluxe for my work rig, in fact. But I think you might be overestimating what it'll do for a household fileserver as compared to simply plunking a 32-bit PCI gigabit NIC into an A7N266-VM/AA. Have you actually tried this?

In my testing with a couple of systems equipped with 32-bit PCI-based gigabit NICs and 150000rpm SCSI drives (an nForce2 rig and an A64 rig), I found that 32-bit gigabit is good for about 25 megabytes per second, and your typical ATA bulk-storage drives aren't going to be able to sustain a great deal higher than that when doing data retrieval, even for just one single client. Add two or three clients pulling data simultaneously, and now your ATA drive is floundering around trying to pretend it's SCSI. You could have a 10Gbit connection but that won't make your ATA drives seek any better or sprint any faster.

Just my 2¢ worth

 

[ponyo]

Listen to mechBgon. He knows what he's talking about.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
In the first place, it's not an nF2 system A7N266-VM/AA is nForce "classic".

Oops, heh.

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Secondly, where did we start talking about passively cooling the CPU, because I must've missed that.

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Low price, long life, stability, passive cooling, check.

I guess I thought you were talking about building an entire system...

Originally posted by: mechBgon
In my testing with a couple of systems equipped with 32-bit PCI-based gigabit NICs and 150000rpm SCSI drives (an nForce2 rig and an A64 rig), I found that 32-bit gigabit is good for about 25 megabytes per second, and your typical ATA bulk-storage drives aren't going to be able to sustain a great deal higher than that when doing data retrieval, even for just one single client. Add two or three clients pulling data simultaneously, and now your ATA drive is floundering around trying to pretend it's SCSI. You could have a 10Gbit connection but that won't make your ATA drives seek any better or sprint any faster.

Just my 2¢ worth

I think that my 6x120GB RAID-5 file server would easily absorb multiple gigabit clients if it had the right mobo/NIC+interface combination.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Ichinisan

Originally posted by: mechBgon
In the first place, it's not an nF2 system A7N266-VM/AA is nForce "classic".

Oops, heh.

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Secondly, where did we start talking about passively cooling the CPU, because I must've missed that.

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Low price, long life, stability, passive cooling, check.

I guess I thought you were talking about building an entire system...

Originally posted by: mechBgon
In my testing with a couple of systems equipped with 32-bit PCI-based gigabit NICs and 150000rpm SCSI drives (an nForce2 rig and an A64 rig), I found that 32-bit gigabit is good for about 25 megabytes per second, and your typical ATA bulk-storage drives aren't going to be able to sustain a great deal higher than that when doing data retrieval, even for just one single client. Add two or three clients pulling data simultaneously, and now your ATA drive is floundering around trying to pretend it's SCSI. You could have a 10Gbit connection but that won't make your ATA drives seek any better or sprint any faster.

Just my 2¢ worth

I think that my 6x120GB RAID-5 file server would easily absorb multiple gigabit clients if it had the right mobo/NIC+interface combination.

Read XBit Labs' review of the Promise SX6000 here and see what you think.

As we see, the highest speed was obtained in RAID 0 of 4 HDDs, and with the increase in the number of HDDs in the array, this value got a little bit lower. At the same time, we can't help pointing out that the array speed is lower than that of a single IBM DTLA 307015 with a regular UDMA100 controller.

Ouch! ATA RAID5 may be expandable and fault-tolerant, but if it's slower than a single drive on an ATA100 controller... I think I made my point here.

Anyway, I didn't quite realize that you wanted your HTPC to also be the fileserver for the whole household. What about building your killer fileserver on your dream platform (nF3 250Gb, i875P-CSA, etc) and make your HTPC a separate computer that accesses the fileserver like the others do?

 

[BFG10K]

AFAIK nVidia's sound drivers still have a lot of issues in games so any petition should be aimed at fixing those first.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
AFAIK nVidia's sound drivers still have a lot of issues in games so any petition should be aimed at fixing those first.

My guess is you haven't used the latest ones. They are really quite nice, and I don't have a bit of trouble in any current games...

 

[Pariah]

Think about it. Nearly all of the bandwidth is used by GB LAN. That leaves nothing for your other devices...not to mention DV CAPTURE HARDWARE!

How is 50-60MB/s nearly all the bandwidth of PCI? And that's under ideal conditions with high quality Gbe controllers, cabling and jumbo frames, which is an extremely rare setup for home users. I've used Gbe at home for years, so my hardware is a bit older and doesn't use jumbo frames, and I get performance around where mechBgon does, about 25-30MB/s. No where remotely close to saturating PCI, and well below the capabilities of one of my hard drives. DV capture hardware requires 3.6MB/s. A 24x CLV CDROM drive can handle that speed. I used to transfer DV movies from my camera to my PII 266 laptop with some dirt slow 4200RPM HD years ago. Big deal.

You've never actually used Gbe have you? And I can almost guarantee you that your RAID 5 array doesn't come anywhere close to saturating the PCI bus. ATA RAID 5 is garbage unless you have a recent 3Ware card.

 

[Ichinisan]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Read XBit Labs' review of the Promise SX6000 here and see what you think.

Yeah, that's exactly the controller that I got...

Anyway, I didn't quite realize that you wanted your HTPC to also be the fileserver for the whole household. What about building your killer fileserver on your dream platform (nF3 250Gb, i875P-CSA, etc) and make your HTPC a separate computer that accesses the fileserver like the others do?

Well, the HTPC has to access the file server for most of it's content...including raw DVD rips.

Originally posted by: Pariah

Think about it. Nearly all of the bandwidth is used by GB LAN. That leaves nothing for your other devices...not to mention DV CAPTURE HARDWARE!

How is 50-60MB/s nearly all the bandwidth of PCI? And that's under ideal conditions with high quality Gbe controllers, cabling and jumbo frames, which is an extremely rare setup for home users. I've used Gbe at home for years, so my hardware is a bit older and doesn't use jumbo frames, and I get performance around where mechBgon does, about 25-30MB/s. No where remotely close to saturating PCI, and well below the capabilities of one of my hard drives. DV capture hardware requires 3.6MB/s. A 24x CLV CDROM drive can handle that speed. I used to transfer DV movies from my camera to my PII 266 laptop with some dirt slow 4200RPM HD years ago. Big deal.

You've never actually used Gbe have you? And I can almost guarantee you that your RAID 5 array doesn't come anywhere close to saturating the PCI bus. ATA RAID 5 is garbage unless you have a recent 3Ware card.

Like I said, the real-world performance is so low because the PCI bus is *already* saturated by numerous other devices (includes integrated PCI devices). Until PCI-X comes, 25-30MB/s will be a common real-world performance limitation.

 

[mechBgon]

For the record, the A7N266-VM/AA has no integrated PCI devices. Its audio, IDE, LAN and so forth are native to the southbridge, leaving the PCI bus free. Peak PCI throughput for the nForce and nForce2 PCI bus seems to be around 120-122MB/second... here's a screenshot of Adaptec SCSIBench doing what amounts to a burst-rate test with one 15000rpm SCSI drive, hitting the PCI wall at 122MB/sec. That screenshot is from one of my nForce2 boards, but was typical of my A7N266-VM/AA's too.

Anyway, I hope nVidia does build a PCI audio card for your needs You never know, it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings