3D sound via optical output. Is this poss??

Mickey123

Hi,

At the moment I’m using my Asus mobo’s Realtek built in sound card and getting any speaker to work with anything other than the front left or right (2,1) seems impossible via digital out..

If I upgrade and use a Creative X-fi sound card via its TOS link optical connector to my front room amp/receiver will I get 5.1 or just 2.1 as with the Realtek?

I understand the X-fi series doesn’t use DD or DTS etc etc.

The big Q is would I get Creative 3D sound from a Digital Output?
IE if a sound happens behind me will it only be heard over the rear satellites?

shwaip

optical out can do at least 5.1.

With your current sound card, how have you set the computer to output in the speaker settings?

Mickey123

Ive got the realtek built in sound card outputting to 5.1. Ive also tried all posible settings

TheLostSwede

The only solution that puts out 5.1 via the Optical is the Soundstorm from the Nforce 2 days or the DTS Connect series of soundcards.

Thrax

Your sound card needs to be an nForce2 APU (Abit NF7-S 2.0 was the best), or it needs to support the DTS Connect technology, which encodes EAX1/2/3 in a 5.1 dolby signal.

Mickey123

oh dear, this is what I feared:(:eek:

OK, so if I upgrade to the X-fi and use it's optical output will I get surround sound?

By this I mean if a tank is behind I will hear it from behind?

Surely you can get sound out of all 6 spekers in a front room 5.1 set up via an optical connection from your PC???

Thrax

Here's the thing. The SPDIF/Optical connection traditionally only encodes Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital or Dolby DTS. These are, of course, 2 - 7.1 channel sound streams (With Dolby DTS being the best of the three at 5.1-7.1 channel-optimized), however the games themselves do not encode to any dolby format; most games today output their individual audio channels via EAX version 1, version 2 or version 3. EAX was designed for PCs to do what Dolby did for home theatres - give us high-quality, positionable surround sound with special effects (Such as echo, time delay, etc). Because EAX was designed for the PC and Dolby DTS was designed for the home theatre, they'be been largely incompatible for a long time. Sound cards that supported Dolby Digital or Dolby DTS did so so that we all could enjoy crystal-clear surround sound in our DVD movies played on our DVD-ROMs.

It was not until the advent of a technology called "DTS Interactive" that a game's EAX stream could be encoded in 5.1 Dolby DTS. So, therefore, any soundcard you purchase has to support DTS Interactive/DTS Connect (It'll say so on the box) to produce 5.1-7.1 channel sound from games via optical.

Mickey123

Thrax,

Thanks for the explanation. Makes things alot clearer.

To put the whole thing in easy non tech speak. All I want is 3D sound when playing BF2 and need this via my Digitial connection.

Is this possible with the X-fi? (X-fi is the best for BF2 as you can enable ultra high quality)

zero-counter

Mickey123 wrote:

All I want is 3D sound when playing BF2 and need this via my Digitial connection.

In that case, it depends on the decoder fo your optical sound. What are you hooking the optical out from your realtek mobo to? If a receiver, then use the built in sound environments for 3D sound. If you want to use the EAX or other HIFI options available in the game, you will need to use the creative card for best results.

I have used the optical out of my realtek onboard, connected to my logitech z-5500s and used the sound environment options to mimic 3d sound. I usually set it to pro-logic movie and played games with an awesome sound experience.

I am currently running a Diamond XTREME sound 7.1 DDL card which decodes both DTS and DDL on the fly, thus giving a true surround environment for games and movies which support those formats.