ATI Radeon HD 4600 & 4800 series support 7.1 channel HDMI audio! - Page 2

I bought the Diamond first but it created way too much noise. I returned it and bought the Sapphire DDR3 instead of your MSI from Egghead. Now, if these 4xxx able to do these TrueHD format, I will camp out to get one as soon as become available.

For me prime importance is HDMI connector on the card, next noise as in passive preferably but all this has to fit into my Shuttle. When they are on the market yep I'll flog mine on eBay, not too difficult in the UK as I believe you can't get one for £25 at current exchange rates

I have my HD 2600Pro for 6 months and I sold in eBay for $60 before I bought my 3650 2 weeks ago. So it is not that bad and I don't mind to pay little bit to trade up.

I have gambled with the idea to turn my HD2600Pro into a passive one as the fan is so loud that I can't sell it anymore. Maybe disassemble fix fan and resell.

What does claiming 7.1 HDMI mean on these future cards?

I know that the 3xxx series had the basic motherboard-variant audio chip on board, but all that provided was DD/DTS or 2 channel PCM. Basically DVD abilities. Does claiming 7.1 audio on a discrete video card mean that they are including an Azalea chip onboard(or something equivalent) and are capable of at least 24/96 quality multichannel LPCM (or better yet, full Bitstream)? Or have they gone the Nvidia route and have an input for audio originated from a sound card?

Renethx is correct. It outputs HD audio over the HDMI interface, not just SPDIF quality audio. I haven't heard about bitstream support, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was there. getting the players to do the right thing is actually the harder part.

Can you guys educate me that I thought as long as it is lossless it will able to do TrueHD via HDMI 1.3?

Let's clarify that... TrueHD & DTS-HD MA can be decoded in the player and and sent via LPCM by HDMI 1.1-1.3a, not sure about 1.0. TrueHD & DTS-HD MA can be bitstreamed through HDMI 1.3 and 1.3a only.

Jim

TrueHD & DTS-HD MA sounds the same whether the player decodes it or the AVR decodes it. In this case, it is basically like a .zip file, which makes it very different from the older codecs.

TrueHD & DTS-HD MA are lossless compressed, when decompressed, they make LPCM streams. It does not matter what decompresses them, the result is the same.

The debate then goes onto whether sending the compressed or the uncompressed has a better chance of corruption in the cabling between the player and the AVR (from EMI, etc).

Or between the disk and the software.

So if we want true 49/96 TrueHD then that means we refer to bitstream not LPCM, right? Since we can't do 1.3a HDMI out today, how can we do TrueHD & DTS-HD MA LPCM by HDMI 1.1 today? analogue? multi-channel mini-RCA sound card to pre-amp?

no, HDMI 1.1-1.3a can supply 8 channels of LPCM at 192khz.... as long as your player decodes the HD audio into LPCM, you're golden !

Jim

That part is the same regardless of sending compressed or uncompressed. It is compressed until it hits the point where decompression occurs. If that is the AVR, it passes through the software to get there. If it is the software, it stop being compressed at that point. Both syles are identical to that point.

The correct solution is to remove interference from the path regardless of the style of data sent.

I'm still a little confused as to how this new card gets its audio. Does the card essentially become the "all-in-one" audio/video solution, negating a need for any on-board or discrete audio solution? Or, does the card need to be fed the 7.1 LPCM streams to a header on the card intended to be connected to either the motherboard or a discrete audio card?

I suppose it will be a HDMI out. But what format will support? It remains a secret to the consumer today.

I was being sarcastic, and referring to the fact that the passing of the compressed audio is immune to the downconversion problems we are seeing.

I know. I was being sarcastic too, though not as good as it as you are. I find it stupid that people argue which is better, "unzipping" in the AVR or in the player. It is the same.

That sounds great. You wouldn't want to speculate as to whether compressed DD/DTS or even music PCM data could be transmitted as well, would you?

I know that it should sound the same, but I have seen reports that bitstream sounds better, such as this post by Joerod. BTW, Joerod is very well regarded in the "AMPs, Receivers, and Processors" forum.

I have never tried TrueHD or DTS-MA bitstream myself, so I can't comment personally.

-Dave

Okay, I am still confused. Does it absorb and encode onto the HDMI transmission the data from an existing audio chip on the motherboard or a discrete card on the PCI(e) bus? Or does it actually have an audio chip on it that does everything? The reason I ask is because I am building a new computer (gaming HTPC) and I would need to know if I should be looking for motherboards with the top audio chips built-in.

All ATI cards since the HD 2000 series have had an integrated Intel HD Audio (Azalia) compliant codec, so the ATI video card is its own audio device. The problem until the 4x00 series is that the connection between the on die audio codec and the GPU was equivallent to S/PDIF and nothing more. The 4x00 series seems to rectify this, so full 7.1 multi-channel LPCM can be passed.

My feeling is ATI might work with Realtek somehow. All sounds cards now, implement D/A converters. Perhaps the ATI cards would bypass D/A decoding and pass the signal directly to the HDMI? My question is, will the lower end also support HDMI audio?

Finally: Why is that those 3xxx cards support H.264 yet based on people's statements, choke on de-interlacing?? Is the 3450 really that weak on this regard? I wonder why they wouldn't be able to implement full de-interlacing with the RV710 chips...

I considered the same thing, but I had three issues with that. First, why pay a ton of money for DACs on a discrete sound card that will never be used? I have some expensive DACs in my receiver and I would like to use them. Second, that big elaborate HDMI in/out card and daughter card that Asus is about to kick out the door is going to cost a pile of money. And third, the more complicated something is the more likely to have failures. If everything is on one piece of hardware the likelihood of conflicts is theoretically much lower and you only need to worry about one set of drivers.

Also, I want Creative and everything they touch to burn in @!#$. So I gave up on EAX some time ago. Microsoft did too with Vista so I imagine that the entire EAX technology is going to wither away.

How much is it going to cost?

I guess we'll just have to wait to see if this is protected path or if the card can bitstream out. Otherwise, at least with PDVD, this would be the same as the current intel onboard solutions. (although, perhaps with better PQ.)

Chris

I am only guessing here, based upon their prior prices, but it will be steep.

Xonar AV1 ~ probably $200 MSRP
HDAV-DB1 daughter card ~ between $50-$100, maybe more.

So that is probably at least $250 added on to the cost of a computer. The fact is that a sound card that provides good DACs is expensive to make. If you don't intend to use the DACs and just send it out digitally on the HDMI cable 95% of the card's cost is wasted. That same $250 will pay for most of a 48XX series card. If you are on a budget I imagine the sound card can be lived without.