F
Frank
JP Fournier said:
Wait for the final release and for the final Win64 drivers. They are all
beta by now.
You tell yourself: >> After much fighting with driver installation<< Thats
beta
Wait for the final release and for the final Win64 drivers. They are all
beta by now.
You tell yourself: >> After much fighting with driver installation<< Thats
beta
D
dr ratt
JP Fournier said:
usually, on less than fully featured sound chipsets, you will only get spdif
output while the card is set for stereo speakers.
dr ratt
J
JP Fournier
Does anyone have their a8n-sli spidf sound output working
on 64 bit XP? After much fighting with driver installation
I get sound, but nothing via spdif via coax into my receiver.
Any thoughts?
jp
on 64 bit XP? After much fighting with driver installation
I get sound, but nothing via spdif via coax into my receiver.
Any thoughts?
jp
J
JP Fournier
I installed regular XP, and of course it now works.
I'm a bit disappointed that this 8-channel audio chip
spdif out is only stereo. I was hoping to avoid a second
set of speakers by plugging the spdif into my receiver,
but if I do this I only get stereo sound. Very annoying.
regards
jp
I'm a bit disappointed that this 8-channel audio chip
spdif out is only stereo. I was hoping to avoid a second
set of speakers by plugging the spdif into my receiver,
but if I do this I only get stereo sound. Very annoying.
regards
jp
R
Robert Hancock
JP said:
The only way you can get multichannel output through S/PDIF is if it
gets encoded into Dolby Digital. The only way you can do that (other
than playing DVDs, etc. which are in Dolby Digital already) is if the
sound chipset can re-encode the audio into Dolby Digital itself. The old
SoundStorm audio on the nForce2 is the only major sound chipset that has
had that capability.
J
JP Fournier
Robert said:
Interesting. It's such an obvious feature, I wonder
why it's not more prevalent. Actually I did notice
that I was getting some surround sounds with doom3 +
the spdif, but it's not 5.1 as I would have liked.
later
jp
B
Ben Pope
Robert said:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/newsrelease/news_page.php?UID=387
"The Audio also fully supports Dolby Digital encoding"...
It has some kind of 24Bit SBLive! on there... I'll find out tomorrow.
Oh, well... I won't find out until I build a -5V circuit for my ATX 2.0
compliant PSU. Damn MSI!
Ben
P
Paul
Ben said:
The only hardware Dolby Digital AC3 encoding I know of, is the
DICE in the Nforce2 Soundstorm. There is software encoding
available on a couple of Azalia equipped Intel boards, but that
is a high latency solution for encoding non-DVD 5.1 source
for use across SPDIF.
Regarding the MSI board, this page says the audio is a
CA0106 144 pin PCI bus based sound chip. It uses a separate DAC
and ADC chip (CS4382 DAC and WM8775 ADC).
http://techreport.com/ja.zz?comments=7713
Picture of MSI board here:
http://www.tbreak.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=9570
K8N SLI Platinum (Dolby Digital EX analog - at top of advert)
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=641
If you download the manual, it talks about 7.1 sound and "Dolby
Digital" encoder. But it could be Dolby Digital EX, which
is not an SPDIF technology, AFAIK.
http://dolbylabs.com/consumer/technology/dolby_ex.html
This review says there is no DICE to encode 5.1 channel audio
so it can be transported in AC3 format over SPDIF.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1734&page=2
The capabilities are kinda stated in post #68 here:
http://www.anandtech.com/talkarticle.aspx?i=2358&ATVAR_START=61&p=4
I don't like the fact that the feature set for this product
is so hard to discover. The Creative solution looks more like
a CMI8738 than an Audigy.
Paul
B
Ben Pope
Paul said:
Well, I have the Diamond, which might be the platinum depending on where
the world you are. (I'm in the UK).
Yes, the manual explicitly states:
"7.1 Channel output supported, Dolby Digital encoder"
And the board does have an SPDIF out.
Which means what? That your games won't be encoded?
Yeah, the specs for the board various by location, which is really bad.
If it doesn't encode my games as DD I'll be upset. The question is what
exactly does it encode? Not that I have a DD amp & speakers yet.
Ben
P
Paul
Ben said:
I think MSI attempted to prey on the people who were
"Soundstorm crazed". If you read some of the posts on
Anandtech, there are people there drooling, waiting for
"Soundstorm2". I think the MSI advert is playing to
that crowd.
I'm no audio expert, but my interpretation of what I've been
reading, is the so-called Dolby Digital EX is yet another
acoustic enhancement technology. Given M channels in, it
gives M+N channels out. Or something like that. Like many
technologies before it, trying to interpolate a little
more realism into audio.
What puzzles me, is why the word "Digital" is in the name
of that technology. The added channels are some mathematical
function of the original channels. But, in a sense, this
is an analog technology, and it is not digital in the
sense that most people expect of digital - a lossless
transformation. There will be situations where the
mathematical transform will suck, and situations where it
will blow your socks off. If they used an acronym like
EAX or HRTF, then people would know it was yet another
one of _those_ effects.
I still see a lot of interest in AC3 and encoding AC3.
And I don't really understand it, when you have all those
nice analog outputs on sound cards, that really should
be good enough when using a 10% distortion 500W set of
computer speakers. I can only assume the interest in
AC3, is for some kind of ripping operation, because
there also seems to be a lot of interest in SPDIF_in.
I think for Nvidia, that Soundstorm was a grand
experiment for them. And perhaps the economics of the
licensing arrangement have prevented a repeat of
the concept (i.e. every user paying X dollars more
for a feature they might not use, spoiling the
price competition with Via).
Just a few opinions (from a non-audiophile),
Paul
B
Ben Pope
Paul said:
I don't doubt that.
Yes, that would be useful... but marketing seems to be about deception
these days, as much deception as is allowed by law, and them some, in
some cases.
I've been looking at the various Logitech setups, but I keep wondering
if they would compete with a seperates setup. I suppose I could run a
multitude of cables to a multitude of amps with a multitude of speakers.
I've not really looked into anything beyond 2 channel - I'd love to
play games with positional audio but it's finding the space to set it
all up in the corner of the bedroom
.Possibly. There seems to be a lot of that kind of thing going on too.
I loved the soundstorm, it was an extremely good "free" soundcard. I
don't understand why motherboard manufacturers / nVidia decided it was
too expensive, everybody you speak to who had an nForce2 with soundstorm
and is upgrading is disappointed by that move.
Cheers. I guess I should be a bit more pragmatic about it, and stop
worrying about things I doubt I'll use
Ben