newbie question...I currently have the new X-Fi ExtremeMusic sound card...do I need to purchase a speaker set that has a separate decoder in order to get Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS or can my sound card handle that?...if my sound card can do this then why do people purchase separate decoder boxes for their pc speakers?
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Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS question
- Thread starter polonyc2
- Start date
There isn't a set of computer speakers made that you would be able to hear the difference between the sound cards decoder and the speakers decoder.
Basically because even the most expensive computer speaker sets have junk for sound. They are more geared toward games with crackling bulletfire and boomy explosions.
Of course it doesn't take much to make some of them sound good, usually involves changing sattellites out completely or adding a crossover and additional driver (for the sattelites that have no tweeters)
Basically because even the most expensive computer speaker sets have junk for sound. They are more geared toward games with crackling bulletfire and boomy explosions.
Of course it doesn't take much to make some of them sound good, usually involves changing sattellites out completely or adding a crossover and additional driver (for the sattelites that have no tweeters)
EchoMatrix
Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2005
- Messages
- 806
doesnt have DD Live though. need the HDA card for that. I <3 it also
Right. As the others have said, you'd need a proper home theatre receiver (or audiophile external DAC) and some real hi-fi speakers before the difference would become apparent. Even the top end of computer speakers are well below the bottom of hi-fi speakers, they just aren't good enough to start exposing weaknesses in anything but a _terrible_ DAC.
EchoMatrix said:
DD Live is an *encoding-only* specification (it means the hardware creates a DD PCM stream from non-encoded material). DD Live is also a *superset* of DD (the same hardware can also *decode* existing DD-encoded material). However, the only existing licensees of DD Live are Intel and nVidia (and both use it for onboard intergrated audio, which requires CPU assistance). There is no separate add-on sound card that supports DD Live, from anyone. Because it is an encoding-only specification, DD Live competes with, in terms of PCs, Microsoft's DirectSound and Creative's EAX (a superset of DirectSound). However, unlike DD Live, EAX can be offloaded onto an APU (Audio Processing Unit) such as E-Mu's original 10K1 (think the original Sound Blaster Live!) freeing the CPU for other tasks.
While some may think that today's burly CPUs always have cycles to spare, the more demanding a software title (especially one of the A-list games, such as Quake 4, Doom III, or Half-Life 2, or even Battlefield 2 for that matter in non-EAX mode), the less likely the CPU can spare ANY cycles for audio processing if the system is already heavily taxed by the game's settings (especially in a non-high-end system, which is MOST likely to be using integrated audio). Therefore, it is the middle and low end, where the CPU is more heavily stressed, rather than the high end, where audio acceleration in the form of Creative's Audigy and X-Fi series is most needed. However, even at the high end, audio acceleration has a use, especially in MMORPGs (think World of Warcraft or even Guild Wars) or multiplayer FPS titles (again, Battlefield 2 comes to mind).
PGHammer said:
Both these cards can do DDL:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829127001 (I acutally owned this one, and it does do DDL)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829118109 (based of the same audio chip as the first one)
And Half-Life 2 doesn't use EAX, it uses Miles.
It was a nice rant, but make sure your facts correct next time.
Moofasa~ said:
I never said that HL2 used EAX. Of the titles I stated, only Doom III does EAX (and that requires a patch), and the default is OpenAL. However, unless you are going to *encode* in DDL, I can't see the bennies vs. standard audio acceleration. If a title supports Dolby Digital, you don't need an *external* decoder *unless* you are going to route the audio stream to a home theater system (which likely already has one); this may be the only case where DDL would be useful. However, doing that adds at least two more conversion stages to the signal path, which is almost NEVER a good thing from an audio point of view. Typically, lengthening the signal path or adding extra conversion stages increases both distortion *and* signal loss; encoding in DD and then routing externally to a separate decoder does both. That is the issue I was trying to bring up.
Stoly said:
You mentioned the NForce2 chipset; does it include a DSP or APU or simply a series of codecs? If it simply includes codecs, as opposed to a DSP or APU, then it uses host (CPU) based processing, as do most integrated audio solutions. Also, by transcoding from EAX or DS3D into DDL and then routing externally, you are adding two conversion stages *and* lengthening the signal path. Doing simply one of them adds the effects of both signal loss and the resultant increased distortion to the end-product signal; doing both multiplies the effect. Even with audiophile-grade wiring, there *is* additional signal loss simply due to wireline resistance (and even if the entire additional signal path is *optical* as in a TOSLINK connection, there *will* be losses in the additional encoding/decoding stages at the encoding/decoding devices). To decrease the amount of distortion, optimally, you want to *shorten* the number of stages the audio signal must go through, not lengthen them.
PGHammer said:
The Soundstorm DDL is completly done through hardware.
PGHammer said:
Which is false.
I never said DDL was the greatest thing ever so I don't know why you are ranting about that, but since you opened the topic.
DDL is only useful for games. No one will use it for music and obviously not for movies. It is meant to be a cheap (certainly not perfect) way of getting a 5.1 source to your receiver and bypass your sound cards dacs. Most sound cards dacs suck. An audigy 2 hooked up to a good receiver using analogs will not sound better than DDL using the SPDIF out. Yes you can buy an Elite Pro for triple the cost and get better audio than a DDL card. That's not really the point of it though. Yes we know there is compression using DDL, but it's better than most sound cards dacs. So it is a perfect cheap solution for people who have receivers...No one is saying DDL won't lose any information, but it is certainly better than a lot of sound card's dacs plus a lot less messy wires.
Moofasa~ said:
And that, to me anyway, is DDL's largest weakness.
The very fact that it is only really useful for games, *and* requires that second conversion stage, are both strikes against DDL as a computer-based solution.
True, most sound card DACs (and this is equally applicable to integrated audio, even SoundStorm) *do* suck. However, in very few cases is this noticeable as the audio path is typically VERY short in a computer audio application (usually right to a set of speakers, amplified or otherwise). Adding an external decoder (even a receiver) into the equation DOES still add an additional set of variables into the equation (while a medium or high-end receiver will have a better DAC section than most sound cards, there is still the additional distance the signal has to travel, and how it is sent, that MUST be taken into the equation; if an external S/PDIF wire is used, then the resistance of the copper wire itself and the resulting signal degradation through wireline resistance also has to be taken into account). Also, there will be some additional signal path losses inside the receiver itself, and in the DAC section; while the DAC-section losses will be less than those in a sound card, the wireline losses could actually be greater, depending on the path length increase, than simply using 5.1 PC speakers and even as humble a sound card as the original Sound Blaster Live. If you purchase higher-quality wiring in an attempt to mitigate wireline-resistance losses, it can wind up throwing the cost/benefit balance of DDL completely out of kilter, especially compared to the X-Fi XtremeMusic, or, in some cases, even an X-Fi Platinum.
Lastly, with some audio sources OTHER than games (in particular, high-definition television audio and DVD movie audio) a large percentage of these sources are already DD-encoded (or DTS-encoded) and DDL-based audio+external-decoding solutions preclude doing anything else with that source as far as audio shaping goes, as opposed to Creative's sound cards, which are specifically designed to permit the use of EAX with DD or DTS-encoded material (this is true all the way back to, again, the Sound Blaster Live).
That's nitpicking, the type of wires used really doesn't effect quality to a noticeable level. And analog wires too can effect quality (though once again it won't really be noticeable). You can't say DDL sucks because some of the wires people *may* use will reduce quality. That's like saying an X1800 XT sucks because some monitors can only use an 800x600 resolution. Wires or not, DDL is nice alternative to cheap sound cards in order to connect your computer to your receiver.
Ick, who would use EAX with pre-encoded material? I know I don't. Movies generally sound the same on every card. That's a stretch saying Creative cards are better because you can enable EAX on movies (which I am pretty sure not a lot of people want to do).
georgegeorge
n00b
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2005
- Messages
- 26
I find it funny how people bad-mouth these DDL cards but the people that actually have these cards rave about them. Ordered mine and expecting it here next week.
See some comments by owners here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16829127001
See some comments by owners here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16829127001
On my desk is a stack of audio cards that I have used, one of which is the HDA Mystique, plus I also have a NF2 + Soundstorm motherboard, so I have had experience with the RealTek codec, CMI's solution, and others. (Revo 7.1, TBSC, Audigy2, Audigy4 Pro, SB Live!, etc.) Of the 2, I prefer nVidia's DD Live implementation, being that they used a hw solution for offloading CPU usage, and was able to be fine-tuned. The Sensaura support just got a little dated, and had some issues with a couple of games I played involving inaccurate placement.georgegeorge said:
Otherwise the DD Live feed to my receiver worked well, tho you had to adjust the LFE when in multichannel if the crossover was too high due to overwhelming bass levels. Using the output stage on the Pioneer was very nice, tho I was limited to 16bit output. (I have a collection of hi-res recordings) Going over the to A4 Pro, and later to the Elite Pro allowed me to have the same quality output stage w/o giving up functionality. Plus I also use my PC as a DVD-A player, so having 24-bit capacity is a requirement. Towards the end, when I got my Infinity sats, I started to notice some very minor artifacting in the compressed audio on select music off the DD Live feed.
I'm with moofasa. Sorry, but you ain't going to convince me a one meter or less run of cable is going to "degrade" a digital signal in any noticeable way whatsoever. You can't really "degrade" an encoded signal like DD or DTS anyway. If the full, uncourrupted digital signal doesn't get through you won't get subtly degraded audio quality, you will get silence.
Moofasa~ said:
I never said that DDL itself sucked. However, I *did* say that, for my own usage, the disadvantages of DDL (requires an external decoder for maximum versatility, attendant extra cost) outweigh any advantages.
I further stated that I have a set of 5.1 speakers already, and I therefore have no need or desire to add a separate external decoder to the mix.
Lastly, most home theater systems *do* have audio shaping options for application to external sources; however, they generally preclude the decoding of Dolby Digital (if you select one of the audio soundfield options, you lose the ability to decode Dolby Digital). This, however, is not the case with the SoundBlaster Live or Audigy, or the X-Fi series. Further, the X-Fi's crystallizer lets you apply the audio shaping to rips and recordings (via Creation Mode). The *all sound cards sound the same when decoding DD* definitely doesn't apply when you add audio shaping (such as EAX) into the mix. (I usually DO add EAX environmental shaping to *every* source that I listen to or watch (especially movies or TV) because it literally changes the impression of where I am in relation to that source; because I am not as dependent on speaker placement as I would be when relying strictly on Dolby Digital. The placement of my PC and my resultant speaker-placement issues (while I can properly floorload the subwoofer, I cannot properly place the rear satellites at all, because the distance to the rear wall, which is over twenty feet, precludes it) make some sort of audio shaping *mandatory* to compensate, and no other method allows for such compensation without adding significantly to the cost.)
PGHammer said:
Ok so let me get this straight, you think DDL sucks because you don't have a receiver and actually like EAX and the Crystalizer to change your source?
Well some of us don't have pc speakers and do have a receiver. Therefore, DDL is a simple way to connect our pc's to our receivers. Second, Crytalizer sucks for anything that's not compressed. People who buy receivers and good speakers don't use their equipment to play mp3's, nor use it to use EAX to ruin their pre-encoded material. No one told you that DDL was good for you. You came in this thread ranting about false information about DDL. Then when we call you on it, and you make some lame ass excuse about "wires" degrading quality and only creative cards supporting EAX. Then when we call you on that (wires doesn't make a difference and most people don't use EAX), you claim that the only reason you hate DDL because it doesn't work in your situation and that you happen to like creative's marketing features. That's fine that you like EAX and Crystalizer (although I have no idea why) and that you don't want to add a receiver and get real speakers, but don't post false information about stuff you have no idea about.
No one cares about if DDL works for you set up or not, they care about if it works for their set up. So if you have nothing constructive to say, don't hit the "Reply" button at the bottom.