Stand alone sound card with DD live

[Alamat]

I play BF4 and use speakers connected to a receiver. Using HDMI form the vidcard and I actually want DD from this game and others as well. Looking at Asus Xonar cards and of course, the cheaper the better. Any recommendations, guys?

 

[mfenn]

What's your desired output? I'm assuming that you want to do DD encoding to a device connected with S/PDIF?

 

[Automaticman]

Wait, what type of audio system are you using?

Did you mean you are currently using HDMI audio through a receiver? If that's the case, then you will have better surround audio than you will using Dolby Digital, you just need to make sure it is configured correctly.

Dolby Digital is highly compressed compared to the multi-channel LPCM most newer video cards (ATI 5xxx and newer, most Nvidia 4XX series and newer) are capable of.

 

[mindbomb]

yes, as automaticman has said, dolby digital is a lossy codec, and hdmi already gives you perfect digital audio.

 

[PliotronX]

HDMI is the digital transport medium and without DDL or DTS Connect, game audio is only transmitted digitally in stereo (two channel). Sorry I'm not sure of the cards with it I just used three RCA to minijack cables from Monoprice because DDL and DTS Connect also induce about 40ms of latency. Not everybody notices it but I sure do.

 

[Automaticman]

HDMI is the digital transport medium and without DDL or DTS Connect, game audio is only transmitted digitally in stereo (two channel).

This is not true. HDMI is fully capable of transmitting high bit rate, discrete 7.1 channel lossless LPCM. You just need a video card that supports it, and install the drivers correctly. Then you can use that single cable for multichannel game audio, DD and DTS encoded movies, as well as HD audio from BluRays.

Some older receivers are themselves not able to decode the multichannel LPCM. As a rule of thumb, if the receiver can decode TrueHD and DTS Master, then you should be fine.

So the question is:

1 What video card do you have?

2 What receiver is it plugged into?

3 Have you installed any HDMI audio drivers (particularly with AMD cards)?


For AMD, all 48xx, 5xxx series cards and newer support multichannel HDMI audio. 3xxx cards supported 2 ch LPCM and DD/DTS

For Nvidia (if I remember correctly), the GTX 460, 5xx, 6xx, and 7xx cards will all work. Previous cards only supported DD/DTS over HDMI if plugged into the external header on the card.

 

[PliotronX]

This is not true. HDMI is fully capable of transmitting high bit rate, discrete 7.1 channel lossless LPCM. You just need a video card that supports it, and install the drivers correctly. Then you can use that single cable for multichannel game audio, DD and DTS encoded movies, as well as HD audio from BluRays.

Some older receivers are themselves not able to decode the multichannel LPCM. As a rule of thumb, if the receiver can decode TrueHD and DTS Master, then you should be fine.

So the question is:

1 What video card do you have?

2 What receiver is it plugged into?

3 Have you installed any HDMI audio drivers (particularly with AMD cards)?


For AMD, all 5xxx series cards and newer support multichannel HDMI audio. 3/4xxx cards supported 2 ch LPCM and DD/DTS

For Nvidia (if I remember correctly), the GTX 460, 5xx, 6xx, and 7xx cards will all work. Previous cards only supported DD/DTS over HDMI if plugged into the external header on the card.

Sorry I didn't phrase it correctly. This has been an issue since using computers with S/PDIF output. The games will only 'generate' if that's the right word, two channels over S/PDIF. DDL and DTS Connect are required for audio generated in real time whereas multichannel from movie content is passed through for the receiver to decode.

 

[Automaticman]

Sorry I didn't phrase it correctly. This has been an issue since using computers with S/PDIF output. The games will only 'generate' if that's the right word, two channels over S/PDIF. DDL and DTS Connect are required for audio generated in real time whereas multichannel from movie content is passed through for the receiver to decode.

Again, not true. You're right that this has always been the case when using optical or coax digital output, but HDMI is another story. With HDMI, the PC will see 7.1 discrete channels. From the PC's perspective it is the same as using analog 7.1 output from a soundcard.

You can read about it here (although the article is geared more to watching movies)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2622/3

Remember though, your receiver needs to support it as well, and a lot of receivers from the early days of HDMI did not.

 

[BrightCandle]

SPDIF is limited to stereo without the compression, but presumably you have a receiver capable of taking the output from HDMI? That would be a better solution for the best sound if its possible (although it might introduce some lag to the graphics depending on how the receiver does things).

The soundblaster Z (and ZXR and ZX) all support dd live for 5.1 over SPDIFfrom PC sound sources, but they don't do 7.1 at all.

The Xonar cards (D2X for example) can often support Dolby Digital live as well as DTS Interactive (AC3 on the fly encoding) as well as stereo to 7.1 upmixing on DD and DTS.

 

[PliotronX]

Again, not true. You're right that this has always been the case when using optical or coax digital output, but HDMI is another story. With HDMI, the PC will see 7.1 discrete channels. From the PC's perspective it is the same as using analog 7.1 output from a soundcard.

You can read about it here (although the article is geared more to watching movies)



Remember though, your receiver needs to support it as well, and a lot of receivers from the early days of HDMI did not.

That's frickin awesome! PCM means no compression or latency through a single cable. Next question, do not all TV's support passthrough of PCM multichannel over HDMI?

edit- lol realized the passthrough happens over TOSLINK so of course it's only going to do stereo.

I need a new receiver to take advantage of this

 

[Automaticman]

Exactly!

I've been using it on my HTPC to play multichannel games over LPCM, Ripped movies using DD/DTS, and watch blurays while bitstreaming DTS Master - all over one cable and without having to change the settings each time.

 

[PliotronX]

You totally made my day man +rep