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Digital Sound FAQ

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mccatys said:
Hallo !

First of all THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the heads up...! This thread was magnific ! Really the best I found on Google...

Yesterday I ordered a Logitech Z-5400 5.1 310W :santa: and a Creative X-FI MX Xtreme Sound Card.
I have an old Abit AN7 uGuru with Soundstorm and I thought my audio on-board card won't handle that system...
I found by mistake this forum and looked at the back of my computer and what do you know!?! It has optical SPDIF out... Didn't believe my eyes! :)

I really don't want to spend another 80 EUR or so on a separate sound card if I don't need to... I bought the system for movies and music, I haven't played a game for a while now and I don't think this will change in the near future.
Some told me that I won't get different channels (true 5.1) in a game with optical output. It's the same with watching a dvd movie on my computer? e.g.: I won't be able to get a voice in the front left speaker and the other one in the rear right let's say? That EAX is working on optical as well as on the classic connection?

And... If I turn the volume up... Will there be any noise or differences between my audio on-board - optical output and the Creative X-FI? Which would be better? I really don't know what my old Abit AN7 is capable of... I didn't know that it has SPDIF out :bang head - really unknown resources :)

I'm really thinking now to call and cancel my order on the X-FI... and if anyone could help me out as soon as possible I would really appreciate it!

TX !
Click to expand...
Because your AN7 supports DDLive!, you will get full 5.1 surround when gaming via the SPDIF out. It is only with boards that do not support DDLive! or DTS Connect that you only get stereo sound.

The X-FI will reduce your CPU load (slightly) and give you features like EAX 5. Apart from that they should sound pretty much exactly the same.

EAX works the same on either output.

Just set your DVD watching program to "SPDIF passthrough" (they all support it now) and you'll get the full digital 5.1 surround sound passed directly to your Z-5400s.

I'd cancel the X-FI if you still can, and try the onboard SoundStorm first. It will do everything you want it to do. You can always order a X-FI later, if you find you're missing features.
 
JCLW said:
Because your AN7 supports DDLive!, you will get full 5.1 surround when gaming via the SPDIF out. It is only with boards that do not support DDLive! or DTS Connect that you only get stereo sound.

...

Just set your DVD watching program to "SPDIF passthrough" (they all support it now) and you'll get the full digital 5.1 surround sound passed directly to your Z-5400s.

...
Click to expand...

This FAQ and discussion has proven to be very helpful. I was only getting 2 channel pcm stereo from the digital out on my Audigy 2, and now I understand why. The powerdvd software does have spdif capability if I want to use that during dvd playback.

It appears I won't get everything I need from just using the digital coax on my current sound card. Thankfully my receiver has full analog rca inputs, so I just ran 3 sets of cables from my Audigy 2 to the back of the receiver for full 5.1 analog surround, which is all the receiver would have done with the spdif signal anyway.
 
Wicked Klown said:
How can you tell if a mobo has DDL or DTS on it??
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure sisoft sandra would tell you your audio chip details, then could check online for more info...

BTW, even with correct cabling setup and using the spdif setting in powerdvd I can't get multi channel sound over the coax. I'm pretty sure it's an issue with the audigy 2. Fortunately the Onkyo has 6 analog inputs for surround, otherwise I'd be shopping for a new sound card.
 
There's a SPDIF setting somewhere in the Audigy control panel(s) that you might have to change as well to enable pass-through. I'll have a look on the other computer later.

Since this thread got revived (and stickied) I'll update the motherboard/chip list above sometime over the holidays. Nearly all higher end intel chipset boards support DDLive! now.
 
Creative Audigy HQ -> Device Controls -> Decoder -> SPDIF Pass Through ?
 
a2zsspdiflj3.gif


Works with an A1 using A2 ZS softmodded drivers.
 
It'll do pass through DDL, meaning that your source must be encoded into DDL and your speakers/reciever must have a DDL decoder. None of the current Creative cards can encode audio signals into anything digital.
 
eh? I'm pretty sure my receiver can decode DDL (its about a year old). I find it hard to believe no current creative cards can do encode DDL. So now I'm skeptical that my card also can't do DDL. Can someone confirm this plz.

Celeron_Phreak said:
It'll do pass through DDL, meaning that your source must be encoded into DDL and your speakers/reciever must have a DDL decoder. None of the current Creative cards can encode audio signals into anything digital.
Click to expand...
 
Creative cards can do neither DDLive! nor DTS Connect.

As Celeron_Phreak mentioned they will pass through content that is already digitally encoded, but that is it.

What card do you have?
 
Creative has been more focused on replicating sound quality with lower end components so "sound quality" is affordable for the average consumer. Their cards use a lot of up sampling to make their audio sound nicer. They also are focusing on game effects and recreating environments with their EAX technology.

They don't seem to be to focused on the features that a card has like Turtle Beach, Auzentech and Blue Gears are. Creative has some very nice products, it all depends on how much value you want when purchasing a card. The only downside from not purchasing a Creative card is you don't get the newer EAX stuff which almost every new game implements. That's not much of a downside when you have a decent surround sound speaker setup though.
 
wow, thought creative would have feature for everything, especially with their pricing. Quite expensive if you ask me, to be honest I can't imagine expensive sound cards sound any better than onboard.

o my card is the one in the link above (came with a pakage i bought from a classifieds).

Don't think if there's any software DDL is there:santa:?

I guess i can do analog out with those din plugs to rca plugs. For some reason I feel like it won't sound very good. Another thing is, how do i know which plug is which for the channel with center/subwoofer, wonder if it will damage if I connect them wrong.
 
If you are using onboard, the manual will list off the channels as front, rear, center/sub. The same goes for Creative cards, the manual will list off the channels for the appropriet outputs.

DDL encoding requires an encoder which is hardware based, which is why an applicable sound card must be used in this type of situation.

The more expensive sound cards do have a higher sound quality to them, but to make it present you need a decent or very good speaker setup to match to hear it. The Creative X-Fi offers you "higher sound quality" by upsampling and using the card's equalizers to change the way things sound and are amplified. It's the "poor man's hi-definition audio", if you will.
 
Good thread, it's good to see more and more people are hooking their PC up to their HT. I just wish that soon they develop sound card that will have HDMI 1.3 out to pass through new digital format or the sound card that could pass the digital format to a video card and then output through HDMI 1.3 from video card.
 
I also want to throw a small wrench into the works here. Many of your Realtek audio chipsets, Creative, et. al. are incapable of perfectly passing all digital streams. Although the software/driver configurations that are bundled with the cards may boast "S/PDIF Passthrough", you must pay close attention to what the card actually supports. Until recently (the HD Audio line that Realtek produced for onboard solutions), most onboard audio chipsets are only capable of passing 48Khz/16-bit digital audio. What does this mean? This means that even though you may think the audio is simply being passed to your receiver, it may actually be resampled then passed. Take for example, CD audio - 44.1KHz. Some DTS tracks - 96KHz and/or 24-bits. For those of you who have, for example, an ALC850-outfitted motherboard using the S/PDIF (coax or optical) to your home theater receiver, audio formats following the previous example's specifications are not hitting your receiver as they are being read from the media.

Now that I may have some of you worried, does this really matter? Probably not. Unless you have audio equipment that rates up into the several thousands of dollars, you probably would never notice the difference. On the other hand, you may not like it on the matter of principle and want to hear these formats produced "bit-perfect" (I hate saying that, but for lack of better phrase...). For you, it's time for a new sound device.
 
Jon said:
Until recently (the HD Audio line that Realtek produced for onboard solutions), most onboard audio chipsets are only capable of passing 48Khz/16-bit digital audio. What does this mean? This means that even though you may think the audio is simply being passed to your receiver, it may actually be resampled then passed. Take for example, CD audio - 44.1KHz. Some DTS tracks - 96KHz and/or 24-bits. For those of you who have, for example, an ALC850-outfitted motherboard using the S/PDIF (coax or optical) to your home theater receiver, audio formats following the previous example's specifications are not hitting your receiver as they are being read from the media.

Now that I may have some of you worried, does this really matter? Probably not. Unless you have audio equipment that rates up into the several thousands of dollars, you probably would never notice the difference. On the other hand, you may not like it on the matter of principle and want to hear these formats produced "bit-perfect" (I hate saying that, but for lack of better phrase...). For you, it's time for a new sound device.
Click to expand...
Even relatively cheap audio cards like an Audigy 2 ZS can handle 24-bit/192kHz in Stereo and 24-bit/96kHz in 7.1, so if they support "S/PDIF passthrough", would they really resample an audio stream that is natively supported? Say you put a 96KHz/24-bit DTS stream through that card, wouldn't it truly be S/PDIF passthrough without resampling the audio?
 
shirker said:
Even relatively cheap audio cards like an Audigy 2 ZS can handle 24-bit/192kHz in Stereo and 24-bit/96kHz in 7.1, so if they support "S/PDIF passthrough", would they really resample an audio stream that is natively supported? Say you put a 96KHz/24-bit DTS stream through that card, wouldn't it truly be S/PDIF passthrough without resampling the audio?
Click to expand...

It can accept the stream, but it cannot output anything other than 48KHz/16-bit. The hardware on the card does the resampling. If I read correctly (huge thread on this at avsforums), the Audigy 2 NX (I have one, but have never tested) is the only Audigy 2 card capable of this.
 
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