PCI Dolby Digital Live Card on the market?!

Status
Not open for further replies.
EchoMatrix said:
nope, srry dude

but heres a question about DD. If your sound card puts out DD, and even if your reciever accepts DD, doesnt it just change it to analog anyway and distribute them to the speakers? So at one point in the chain, around the last part in any of that chain, the sound does go Analog. (unless speakers accept digital signals)

or am i missing something here. Cuz by this definition, oyu might as well just use the Audigy 2 cuz eventually everythings goin analog anyway
Click to expand...

Echo, just so you know, no speaker can accept a digital signal without first processing it to analog. Digital amplification would probably be one of the best routes to go, where the actual signal conversion is done during the amp stages, preserving the signal up til then.
 
so it looks like i was tricked by the Sound Blaster corporations evil marketing. they are not as good as they say for the uBer best.
 
I e-mailed BlueGears last week and got back the following response:

"We would like to thank you for your interest in our product. We are
preparing the launch of this product thru our online distribution channel
and we expect to be able to ship out to them starting from end April.

We will contact you back with the link to the product of where you can
purchase it as soon as it is available."
 
Auric said:
I e-mailed BlueGears last week and got back the following response:

"We would like to thank you for your interest in our product. We are
preparing the launch of this product thru our online distribution channel
and we expect to be able to ship out to them starting from end April.

We will contact you back with the link to the product of where you can
purchase it as soon as it is available."
Click to expand...


here is what I got back in march

steve said:
Thanks for your interest in our product. We are preparing the launch of this product thru our online distribution channel and we expect to be able to ship out to them starting from early April.

We will contact you back with the link to the product of where you can purchase it as soon as it is available.

Thanks again & B.Rgds,"
Click to expand...
 
looks like the distro has slipped a little bit..

good thing the end of april is only 8 days away..


i still haven't heard anything about even the online vendors you'll be able to buy them from..
 
clarkkent333 said:
I don't even see these on fleabay any longer.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd like to buy one of these badboys. Who can argue with a $50 DD live soundcard?
 
Syndicated_Death said:
yes the end product your speakers recieve is analog... but when you couple the dacs in my reciever compared to the on board dacs of most sounds cards it's not as good of a conversion.
Click to expand...
A soundcard like a A2 value has DACs that matches up well with most mid-range receivers. DD also causes a quality loss due its lossy compression scheme.
 
Will these types of boards take advantage of dual cores so that there is negligible hit on performance? For example, in a game situation where the game would use only one of the cores.
 
Assuming it's a software implementation, of course. The DD encoding would be a separate thread initiated by the driver, so would be handled on the other core. However, I'm sure that it's a hardware implementation.
 
i dont think it would need another core.

The whole point of having a seperate sound card is to have specific hardware to take off the load. Plus, it would probally have to be software. Also, if you had a game that used both of the cores, you would be stuck in the same boat.
 
EchoMatrix said:
i dont think it would need another core.

The whole point of having a seperate sound card is to have specific hardware to take off the load. Plus, it would probally have to be software. Also, if you had a game that used both of the cores, you would be stuck in the same boat.
Click to expand...

I'd have to disagree. Dual cores are perfect for offloading driver related work from the Primary CPU. I'm not sure of the efficiency of the Windows SMP code but when I was dong testing with Linux software RAID (The most CPU intensive driver work possible) the performance boost gained by enabling SMP was awesome. Actually, it made such an impression on me that I decided I would need to test it myself. I wrote a simple shell script which extracted and deleted the full kernel sources into the software RAID array.

Without the game running the kernel would happily use around 30-60 percent of the CPU executing only my script. If I started up Quake III I would get an inconsistent 50 fps where I would normally get 90. By enabling the second CPU performance returned to a solid 90 fps even while the Kernel thrashed my IDE drive array. I think the performance boost would be the same for Dual Cores.

Also, offloading work from the CPU is not the only reason for a seperate soundcard. Having a seperate soundcard also makes it easier to electrically isolate it which gives cleaner sound I think.
 
yeah thats true. I had an on board sound card once and it was always hissing.

Now heres a question that i dont think anyone else has brought up. Why is a web development company selling these sound cards in the US? BlueGear does web templates...
 
EchoMatrix said:
yeah thats true. I had an on board sound card once and it was always hissing.

Now heres a question that i dont think anyone else has brought up. Why is a web development company selling these sound cards in the US? BlueGear does web templates...
Click to expand...

LOL good point i didn't notice that...

Maybe that's why it's taking them so long to distribute them in the US. They sent Bluegears 10,000 soundcards and Bluegears said "what the hell are we supposed to do with this stuff!"
 
EchoMatrix said:
anyone hear anything yet? its almost time!
Click to expand...

I'm putting my money on an early-mid May release date based upon emails people have been getting recently. Just hold out a little bit longer with whatever integrated sound you have...
 
STEVEN B said:
We are really sorry for the delay. The product is ready, but we wanted to fully localize the product for the US market. That took longer than expected. We have your name contact in our list of customers to contact once the product is available thru our partner retailers.



Sorry again for the delay, and we really appreciate your patience and re-checking with us.



Thanks again & B.Rgds,

Steven
Click to expand...

that's what I got today
 
LOL its actually funny that we are all kinda panting and waiting desperately for this card. When we get it we will play with it for a week and then forget we have it as it becomes just another part of our systems. I am definetly getting one though. Its like having a really really hot GF. To you she is just another chick but to everyone else she is godly. After awhile the only time you appreciate her is when you spend the time to tune her bells and whistles and forget the money she cost you :p
 
That's the funniest thing I have read in a good long time...

 
Hvatum said:
I'd have to disagree. Dual cores are perfect for offloading driver related work from the Primary CPU. I'm not sure of the efficiency of the Windows SMP code but when I was dong testing with Linux software RAID (The most CPU intensive driver work possible) the performance boost gained by enabling SMP was awesome. Actually, it made such an impression on me that I decided I would need to test it myself. I wrote a simple shell script which extracted and deleted the full kernel sources into the software RAID array.

Without the game running the kernel would happily use around 30-60 percent of the CPU executing only my script. If I started up Quake III I would get an inconsistent 50 fps where I would normally get 90. By enabling the second CPU performance returned to a solid 90 fps even while the Kernel thrashed my IDE drive array. I think the performance boost would be the same for Dual Cores.

Also, offloading work from the CPU is not the only reason for a seperate soundcard. Having a seperate soundcard also makes it easier to electrically isolate it which gives cleaner sound I think.
Click to expand...


There's one thing you're missing out here. The linux software RAID driver is multithreaded, and SMP aware, where as games under windows are NOT multithreaded or SMP aware (at least not many, actually, none that I know of).

So no, you probably wounldn't notice a performance increase with a dual core system within games. This will change once games become multithreaded and SMP aware. Checkout Firing Squad's preview of dual cores (specifically the game benchies) to further illustrate my point
 
Syndicated_Death said:
Originally Posted by STEVEN B
We are really sorry for the delay. The product is ready, but we wanted to fully localize the product for the US market. That took longer than expected. We have your name contact in our list of customers to contact once the product is available thru our partner retailers.



Sorry again for the delay, and we really appreciate your patience and re-checking with us.



Thanks again & B.Rgds,

Steven
Click to expand...

bah, we don't need no stinking localization...
 
what's that mean? Making the manual and box in English or something?
 
Stanley Pain said:
There's one thing you're missing out here. The linux software RAID driver is multithreaded, and SMP aware, where as games under windows are NOT multithreaded or SMP aware (at least not many, actually, none that I know of).

So no, you probably wounldn't notice a performance increase with a dual core system within games. This will change once games become multithreaded and SMP aware. Checkout Firing Squad's preview of dual cores (specifically the game benchies) to further illustrate my point
Click to expand...

Good point, the game by itself won't be helped performance wise. But when one considers all of the software running on the computer, including the somewhat CPU intensive driver for the Mystique, there might be an overall gain in FPS. This is a factor Firingsquad actually mentioned at the end of their review but did not have time to benchmark.

WIth a daul core system the Mystique driver could happily take 60% of one core's processing power while still leaving an entire core for the game. So even though a daul core chip will not increase the maximum framerate (yet :D) it will increase the performance of the computer while under load or stress by multiple processes.
 
but I want both cores on the game :(

it means that they want it to be released everywhere at once, athat means everyones gotta have it at the same time before they say "sell"
 
i thought there was an interview not too long ago from Tim Sweeney or someone like that basically saying for games to take advantange of multiple processers the technique that games are programmed in would have to fundamentally change..
 
EchoMatrix said:
but I want both cores on the game :(

it means that they want it to be released everywhere at once, athat means everyones gotta have it at the same time before they say "sell"
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about it, the driver would use no more than 15% of one core. You won't see games which actually need all of both cores for a years anyway.

Game programing for dual core chips will be a huge pain in the ass. Threads need to be synched and work devided evenly - if it isn't then you've got one thread stalling waiting for the output of the other which implies huge inefficiency. In some cases synchronization problems can become so great you would have been better never making it dual core aware in the first place.

To get any significant benefit things need to be programmed from the ground up. No current games can get a "dual core" patch. I suppose a few things like OpenAL could be dumped off onto the second CPU but that's probably not worth the programming effort.
 
Hvatum said:
I.

Game programing for dual core chips will be a huge pain in the ass. Threads need to be synched and work devided evenly - if it isn't then you've got one thread stalling waiting for the output of the other which implies huge inefficiency. In some cases synchronization problems can become so great you would have been better never making it dual core aware in the first place.
Click to expand...

Exactly the issue there...load balancing. Sure, you could simply make one thread process just AI, and one just physics and sound, but what happens if you can run the physics+sound 2 times faster than the AI? You're back to square one, and the dual-core chip isn't getting you any benefit. In fact, if the load balancing is poor, you could get some serious cache thrashing if competing thread keep having to flush the pipelines of the proc.
 
Did anyone notice that HDA has linked to [H] and numerous other forums? If you can't provide us the cards.. then why are you using us as advertisement? That sounds kind of messed up. At least get us some cards first. ;)

http://www.hdaudiovisual.com.au/mcpc/xmgold71.htm

So you know that they know there is a big market for this card.

If they are reading this... I am going to wait for PCIe cards if this one doesn't come out VERY SOON. Especially if PCIe are just around the corner and I need to upgrade anyways. Not that my opinion matters much tho. :p

HDA YOUR TAKING TOO LONG! DON'T LET THE MARKET PASS YOU UP :) (since we know ur looking)
 
H-street said:
lol..


end of april is only 4 days away..
Click to expand...


yup I'm still just waiting... and waiting..............................and waiting.............................yup uh huh waiting
 
ok.. one more day... anyone want to make dibs on it NOT being released to the US tomorrow? :p
 
magnetik said:
ok.. one more day... anyone want to make dibs on it NOT being released to the US tomorrow? :p
Click to expand...


all my money is on it not being out next month either... which sux cuz I just got paid I need something to blow my cash on besides the new fone I got hahaha
 
BeeIzebub said:
bluegears suck, hda should fire their ass
Click to expand...

no shit.. by the time bluegears releases the soundcards.. we will just be plugging digitally to the interface in the back of our necks and listen with a brainwave interface powered by dilithium crystals. :mad: I think they are taking cues from 3D Realms... might as well call it HDA X-Mystique Forever... or even ATI for that matter.. release it to a few people.. let all the reviews come out hyping it.. then link all the reviews on their own website.. vaporware I tell you! If they were smart.. they would realize this is the perfect time to corner the market... but.. if for some reason.. Creative Labs comes out with their version at the same time... I AM BUYING CL INSTEAD JUST BECAUSE THEY TOYED WITH MY EMOTIONS!! OH THE HUMANITY! :)

Today is the last day of April.. someone want to call and ask them what's up? I would.. but I am afraid they are going to tell me what I don't want to hear. haha
 
haha they have a link to this page also. Well im buying a new computer within a month, so if i built it and it aint here, im not buying it
 
and so april came and went.. and still computer audio remains in 1995..
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top