P67 audio over optical digital - 5.1 from games?

[DaveSimmons]

Old motherboards would only send 2.0 audio over optical for most games, because the audio drivers did not include real-time Dolby or DTS encoding of surround sound. Only pre-encoded 5.1 from DVDs was passed through as 5.1.

A few 775 motherboards did include Dolby Digital Live encoding, many did not.

Which P67 motherboards (if any) do real-time 5.1 encoding for games for the optical digital out?

Intel's product page mentions collaborating with Dolby, but doesn't mention whether that extends to the optical out. Gigabyte mentions "Dolby Home Theater" but talks about headphones, not the optical out. Product reviews talk about overclocking and fan control.

 

[Ross Ridge]

Gigabyte mentions "Dolby Home Theater" but talks about headphones, not the optical out.

According to Dolby's WWW site, Dolby Home Theater includes Dolby Digital Live.

My P55 Gigabyte board includes Dobly Home Theater and a quick test shows that it can send a generated Dolby Digital bitsteam to my receiver through it's digital output. It was just a stereo test using Winamp though, I don't have a 5.1 speaker setup.

 

[Modelworks]

There is a difference in dolby digital output and dolby digital live. Dolby digital live requires the hardware to take the streams a game generates for the 5.1 channels and encode them into dolby digital format for output. It is creating a 5.1 output where none existed in the content. That takes a fair amount of dsp work and adds cost to the onboard audio so most boards do not have that feature.

If the motherboard supports it they will advertise that fact in bold print because they have to pay licensing fees to have that specific feature.

 

[nenforcer]

This is a huge selling point for me (as you can tell by my sig) and it seems only Gigabyte boards are officially supporting this on both their AMD and Intel motherboards.

I've seen some other boards tout THX support but not Dolby Digital Live (DDL).

I have a 7.1 surround sound system and the difference is huge for me.

I've never owned a Gigabyte board before but will consider one because of this!

 

[Modelworks]

This is a huge selling point for me (as you can tell by my sig) and it seems only Gigabyte boards are officially supporting this on both their AMD and Intel motherboards.

I've seen some other boards tout THX support but not Dolby Digital Live (DDL).

I have a 7.1 surround sound system and the difference is huge for me.

I've never owned a Gigabyte board before but will consider one because of this!

If the feature is one you need then go with a sound card. Dolby digital live cards have existed for years and some of them can be found now for under $50. Most use the CMI87xx series of chips.