![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Hi,
I'm looking for a sound card that will work well with a lot of switching between 2 channel FLAC and MP3 audio sent via PCM, multichannel audio, multichannel video streams, and encode streams for multichannel audio in games, and every review talks about the need to set the frequency and the number of channels for each piece of content that's about to be played, and I'm wondering if that's true, or still true if driver updates have fixed it, when movie and game streams are going to be sent over SPDIF. Do you have to set the frequency and number of channels in the video and game's audio stream? If you do, doesn't that violate the purpose of using SPDIF to transport the audio stream untouched? When you're done watching the video, do you have to go back into the settings to change anything if you want to start listening to bitstreamed 2 channel PCM audio?
Reviews aren't always clear if all the manual switching is required only when outputting analog, or if it's also during digital. Also, some talk about the improvements in the more recent drivers, at, for instance, bitstreamed audio, but don't mention how they affect the switching issue. I'm okay with manually turning on and off something like Dolby Digital Live for games, but everything else I would like to be sent correctly when it's played without identifying and manually setting its frequency and channels first.
For one other question, what happens when you play 2 things at once? For instance, what happens if you're outputting 7.1 Dolby Digital Live audio from a game while also playing 2 channel music? Is the music be folded into the DD stream and played correctly (the fact that the music wouldn't be bit-perfect in this case is fine) or will there be an error or conflict of some kind? How about an AC3 video while playing the game? Again, decoding and reencoding into a single DDL stream would be fine, as would performing a couple manual settings changes if necessary.
I'm looking for a sound card that will work well with a lot of switching between 2 channel FLAC and MP3 audio sent via PCM, multichannel audio, multichannel video streams, and encode streams for multichannel audio in games, and every review talks about the need to set the frequency and the number of channels for each piece of content that's about to be played, and I'm wondering if that's true, or still true if driver updates have fixed it, when movie and game streams are going to be sent over SPDIF. Do you have to set the frequency and number of channels in the video and game's audio stream? If you do, doesn't that violate the purpose of using SPDIF to transport the audio stream untouched? When you're done watching the video, do you have to go back into the settings to change anything if you want to start listening to bitstreamed 2 channel PCM audio?
Reviews aren't always clear if all the manual switching is required only when outputting analog, or if it's also during digital. Also, some talk about the improvements in the more recent drivers, at, for instance, bitstreamed audio, but don't mention how they affect the switching issue. I'm okay with manually turning on and off something like Dolby Digital Live for games, but everything else I would like to be sent correctly when it's played without identifying and manually setting its frequency and channels first.
For one other question, what happens when you play 2 things at once? For instance, what happens if you're outputting 7.1 Dolby Digital Live audio from a game while also playing 2 channel music? Is the music be folded into the DD stream and played correctly (the fact that the music wouldn't be bit-perfect in this case is fine) or will there be an error or conflict of some kind? How about an AC3 video while playing the game? Again, decoding and reencoding into a single DDL stream would be fine, as would performing a couple manual settings changes if necessary.