I've been using my p4c800 deluxe's onboard ac97 for a while now but I want to get surround working again. I have a cambridge 5.1 surround setup that accepts optical and coaxial digital. What's the cheapest soundcard that encodes analog to DD 5.1 that has good windows drivers? I had a SB Live 5.1 in the past but that always seemed buggy in directX games (BF1942 and Ghost Recon).... It would also be a nice-to-have to be able to simultanoeously be able to outpu analog to my headphones so if I didn't want to use the surround, I wouldn't have to go change settings like I did with my SB Live by un-setting "digital output only". Thanks for any tips, I don't want to go blow $150 on a sound card just for this game.
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Sound Card for Doom3
- Thread starter Salden
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SJetski71
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There currently isn't any soundcard that encodes Non-Dolby into Dolby AC3 with the exception of Nforce2 mobos with the mcp-t southbridge (Soundstorm is a hardware based Dolby AC3 on-the-fly solution) <-- supposedly does it very well.
Certain C-media based cards claim it has software encoding support but its still in development. There are Cmedia-Dolby hacks floating around but results are still sketchy for some. More info on C-media + hacks can be found here with some browsing. You might need to go a dozen pages back or try a search.
Unless your willing to gamble on the cmedia, or try Nforce2 (downgrade) you may be out of luck.
Certain C-media based cards claim it has software encoding support but its still in development. There are Cmedia-Dolby hacks floating around but results are still sketchy for some. More info on C-media + hacks can be found here with some browsing. You might need to go a dozen pages back or try a search.
Unless your willing to gamble on the cmedia, or try Nforce2 (downgrade) you may be out of luck.
SJetski71
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pretty sure it would have either passed the digital signal through or encoded it into non-dolby. I was referring specifically to Dolby in my post above, and D3 doesn't have dolby based audio, thus your quest for an encoder.Salden said:
Here's some related info and be sure to check my links near the bottom of the thread:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=789034
Ok, I suppose I misspoke when I said DD. I guess I just mean multichannel digital. Whatever would allow the 5.1 surround sound from doom to pass via an optical cable to my surround setup but also allow analog stereo to still pass to my headphone jack simultaneously.
SJetski71
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I wish i were more knowledgeable of audio in general and thus i'd be hard pressed to give you a good answer, being D3 specific and all.
You may already know this but its generally accepted that you get a Audigy2 card for gaming and a Via Envy chipset for clean distortion free music listening.
Whatever you do don't rush this purchase as you risk buying the wrong product, more research is in order. Our [H] gaming forum has quite a few D3 specific audio topics ao it might be worth a shot.
Good luck either way
You may already know this but its generally accepted that you get a Audigy2 card for gaming and a Via Envy chipset for clean distortion free music listening.
Whatever you do don't rush this purchase as you risk buying the wrong product, more research is in order. Our [H] gaming forum has quite a few D3 specific audio topics ao it might be worth a shot.
Good luck either way
Ithought I had read on here that it didn't matter what kind of sound card that a person had for D3 since all of the audio is handled by the CPU? Also, I thought people were practically boycotting Creative for their unscrupulous threatening of id Software with a super shady patent lawsuit?
Maybe I'm wrong on both points. Someone will be quick to set me straight I'm sure.
Maybe I'm wrong on both points. Someone will be quick to set me straight I'm sure.
Sharpe said:Ithought I had read on here that it didn't matter what kind of sound card that a person had for D3 since all of the audio is handled by the CPU? Also, I thought people were practically boycotting Creative for their unscrupulous threatening of id Software with a super shady patent lawsuit?
Maybe I'm wrong on both points. Someone will be quick to set me straight I'm sure.
Although all audio decoding/processing is handled by the CPU the sound card will still come into play when it comes to audio quality. So while a cheap 5.1 C-Media sound card will get the same audio signal as an Audigy 2 ZS, the C-Media stil uses cheaper components on the card that will effect the quality of the analog output. Something like an M-Audio Revo 7.1 would probably be about the best card for Doom3 right now. It's lack of hardware acceleration is not important because Doom 3 doesn't use it anyway. It's analog output sound quality is also one of the best out there. To answer your second question, some people did decide to "boycott" Creative products but I don't think that small group is really going to have an effect on their sales. Creative is still the only option if you want a hardware accelerated PCI sound card and most games will make use of this hardware acceleration, Doom 3 is just an exception as far as I know.
eastvillager
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doom3 doesn't work with 7.1, fyi. You have to set your card to 5.1 surround if you want doom3 to recognize your rig as having 'surround'. At least that is the case with an audigy 2 ZS plus gigaworks 7.1 speaker setup.
As far as getting a digital, encoded DD stream out, it isn't going to happen unless your card is smart enough to do the encoding itself, based upon the multichannel sound doom3 is sending it(imho).
Most of the people who'd boycott creative over "Carmack's Reverse" already have their creative boards, imho, or have no intention of buying one anyways. If you want to boycott Creative, do it for the stifling stranglehold they've purposely maintained on the consumer pc audio industry since the SB 'standard' days. If it weren't for ensoniq, aureal, and turtle beach, creative would still have us using ISA audio cards, and paying $300 for the privilege, if they could.
As far as getting a digital, encoded DD stream out, it isn't going to happen unless your card is smart enough to do the encoding itself, based upon the multichannel sound doom3 is sending it(imho).
Most of the people who'd boycott creative over "Carmack's Reverse" already have their creative boards, imho, or have no intention of buying one anyways. If you want to boycott Creative, do it for the stifling stranglehold they've purposely maintained on the consumer pc audio industry since the SB 'standard' days. If it weren't for ensoniq, aureal, and turtle beach, creative would still have us using ISA audio cards, and paying $300 for the privilege, if they could.
roll on NForce4!
as far as i can tell, only the new motherboards that are coming out now have Dolby Digital Encoding, the chipsets are the intel 915 and 925 family that have intels High Definition Audio on board stuff (expect this to become as pervasive as AC97, but its MUCH better, if you get it, you wont need to get a creative card!), the old NForce2 with SoundStorm did Dolby Digital Encoding, and the upcoming NForce4 chipset from NVidia apparently does DDE as well.
so those of us whod like an easy method of hooking everything together will finally have one
now, if creative offered DTS Encoding, id be even happier...
pez
as far as i can tell, only the new motherboards that are coming out now have Dolby Digital Encoding, the chipsets are the intel 915 and 925 family that have intels High Definition Audio on board stuff (expect this to become as pervasive as AC97, but its MUCH better, if you get it, you wont need to get a creative card!), the old NForce2 with SoundStorm did Dolby Digital Encoding, and the upcoming NForce4 chipset from NVidia apparently does DDE as well.
so those of us whod like an easy method of hooking everything together will finally have one
now, if creative offered DTS Encoding, id be even happier...
pez
Ok, this has gotten way off-topic, probably due to my own bad description. I want a sound card that can output digitally to my 5.1 amp and simultaneously send analog stereo to my headphones so I can either choose to listen to my headphones or turn on the amp and crank some serious sounds... This is due to the 9-month old who may be sleeping in the next room. With my sb live 5.1 I could go into the creative control panel and toggle "digital output only" but that's a pain in the ass. On a side not, it would be really cool if I could have the game play over the digital out and say roger wilco functioning ove the headphones only.
Salden said:
What you are asking is not possible with any sound card I know of. The only sound systems that will output a digital 5.1 signal are the Nforce motherboards that use Soundstorm. All other sound cards will simply output a 2 channel stereo PCM digital signal, not 5.1. Supposedly C-Media has a software solution in the works that would use your CPU to encode the 5.1 signal and then send it out the digital connection but I would consider that to be in beta stages at best. The Audigy series will also output 5.1 audio via their digital connection but it is in a proprietary format that only their own speaker systems can use. Your best option is to use analog outputs from the sound card and run them to your receiver. Of course you would then have to split the L/R channel so that headphones could be used as well.
D
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Salden said:
plug the headphones into the amp?
When I refer to "my amp" I am talking about my cambridge dtt3500 speaker head unit which accepts the creative digital din... just on the creative cards, you can't use the digital out and the analog out at the same time. Here's another question. Can I re-install my SB Live 5.1 and leave the onboard realtek sound enabled? Can they coexist?
SJetski71
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Its worth a shot, the worst that'll happen is that you'll boot into safe mode to uninstall creative drivers.Salden said:
To give you a heads up on your other unanswered questions, keep up your research in sound and game forums. I believe 5.1 is achievable with D3 but i'm not sure about digital 5.1
good luck either way and a free bump to you
Salden said:
No answer to your question really...but I also have the dtt3500 amp. It supports 5.1 digital in...but for analog it only supports 4 channels in. So if you want to play Doom3 with that amp you will only get 4 channels if you don't have a soundcard that is able to do digital encoding of the Doom3 sound. I think nforce2 onboard soundchip can do this..?
All afaik...only tried Doom 3 with steror sound so far myself.
lh04
Sorry, I was wrong it seems.
I've now tried enebeling surround sound in Doom 3 using my Soundblaster 5.1 digital and Cambridge Soundworks DTT 3500 amp and it works very well as far as I can tell.
Had sound in all 6 speakers and sounds seemed to come from the correct speaker depending on where the soundsource was positioned in the game.
lh04
I've now tried enebeling surround sound in Doom 3 using my Soundblaster 5.1 digital and Cambridge Soundworks DTT 3500 amp and it works very well as far as I can tell.
Had sound in all 6 speakers and sounds seemed to come from the correct speaker depending on where the soundsource was positioned in the game.
lh04