X-meridian Question

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MetalDwarf

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2002
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I have a pretty good Home Theatre reciever/amplifier that encodes/upmixes stereo to DTS Neo:6

will i hear a difference in how the X-meridian card upmixes stereo sources like mp3s/flak/divx to neo:6 compared to my recievers upmix?

to put it another way would i hear a difference if i output a regular old analog stereo L/R from the x-meridian to my reciver and have the reciever upmix
VS.
digital out from x-meridian to reciever and the reciever just decodes.

(ignoring analog vs digital noise floor, s/n, etc)
 
No. DTS:Connect encodes 6 (5.1) pcm channels to 6 (5.1) DTS channels. If only two pcm channels have data (like music), only two out of the six DTS channels will have the music data (meaning it does not upmix at all, so only two speakers would play music). In fact, your audio will technically sound worse due to DTS's compression. The only advantage of DTS:Connect or DDL is for games.
 
interesting.

so i would likely hear a difference using the analog side of the x-meridian as its got pretty good dacs etc. and then if i play a game swap inputs on my reciver and go digital

IE: video 1 = analog from xmerdian = good for movies and music
video 2 = digital from xmerdian = good for games (but not as good as a x-fi due to no EAX 5)
 
I don't think that the upmix will differ if you use the same technology(DTS Neo) but the sound will be difference.

If you output a regular old analog stereo L/R from the x-meridian to your reciver and have the reciever upmix, the process is possibly like this:
digital stereo>analogue stereo>digital stereo>receiver DSP upmix>analogue surround

If you use the encoding from the x-meridian to your reciver, the process is possibly like this:
digital stereo>X-Meridian DSP upmix>digital compression>digital decompression>analogue surround

Both will degrade the sound but which is better depends on the card and receiver. The best solution and you don't need a X-Meridian to do this:
digital stereo>receiver DSP upmix>analogue surround

X-Meridian/Oxygen HD chip has 3 different upmix technologies:
Dolby Pro Logic IIx
DTS Neo: PC
C-Media Virtual Speaker shifter

Each upmix technology sounds differently but if you don't use the upmix technology, the card will just duplicate the front channel to the rear channel.
 
so i dont play a lot of games im primarily concerned with sound quality for music etc

what card in the $100-150 price range has the best audio quality?
 
Upmixed music? If you think that your receiver is better than X-Meridian's analogue, just buy a cheap sound card with digital output and send a stereo digital to the receiver and let it do the upmix.
 
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