Will we see 9.1 or 11.1 sound cards?

As long as some dude is willing to pay for it.

4rme, I stopped at 5.1, good enuff for my less than golden ears.

I see little point when there is no 9.1 or 11.1 source material. I have two rooms in my house with 11.1 setups. These are connected to receivers that handle 9.1 in either high or wide configurations. It sounds great! However, the receivers are 'fed' by HDMI, able to carry just 7.1 for now. The receivers use algorithms to fill in the height and wide info, and do a great job. I'll eventually upgrade to 11.1 receivers with the newer DTS Neo:X format, but not just yet.
For a sound card to be useful at 9.1 or 11.1 from 5.1/7.1 source material, it would be using these same algorithms. Probably, it would output analog to a receivers pre-amp inputs, or to separate amplifiers. If the former, there's no need as the receiver itself would be able to encode the high and wide info. If the latter, there could be somethign to this, but it'd be for a very niche market indeed.

HDMI Bitstreams, so whatever is sent is what my receiver gets. My sound card does not do anything with it other than package it up nicely with the video.

Yes, but is the HDMI spec capable of sending 9.1/11.1 currently? If not, analog would be the way to go.

If you had a receiver that supported 9.1 or 11.1 analog ins, you'd think it would also support the wide/height technologies...otherwise they probably wouldn't have bothered with the extra analog inputs...could be wrong...but if that's the case, why wouldn't you just bitstream and let the receiver algorithms handle it?

I want a 16 channel soundcard.

Then I can do a 7.1 fully active setup where the PC is the crossover (with room correction).

There are some Pro solutions, but they are very expensive.

I'd settle for just getting a couple of BRs made with discreet 7.1 audio

-Suntan

Agreed: I'm probably one of the few people with a working MSI DIVA (internal 5 channel class D amp). It sounds great and works really well. It can deliver most AV functions well but what it's lacking (and I suspect will lack for the foreseeable future will be full xbox360 and PS3 emulators for PCs). If this software existed, I don't think I'd need traditional receivers, prepros, or game cosoles. Note that MSI had a 7-channel prepro card in conjunction with the amp card, so I see no technical reason why a 9.1 or 9.2 (if not 11.1 or 11.2) could not be produced.

That's all two of us!

The current crop of 9.1/11.1 receivers only have 7.1 analog inputs. The extra channels are added by processing; this again begs the question about why extra channels are needed at the level of the sound card.

The Denon 4311CI owner's manual says it will decode 11.x when available from the source. So that would imply that yes, HDMI is already capable of carrying an 11.1 signal.

According to Wikipedia, even HDMI 1.4a is limited to:

Further, while it has 11.1 pre-outs, there is no way for an 11.1 analog signal to enter the receiver.

Finally, doing a search for "11.2" ("11.1" isn't found at all, and neither is "11.x"), there is no mention of that Denon receiver being able to decode an 11.x channel signal. I may not have looked hard enough, so please do correct me if I'm wrong, and tell me which page you saw this on. I'm not trying to be difficult; I would truly love to know whether this is possible or not.

Wikipedia isn't always an all encompassing source of information. If the channels are wrapped in a bitstream, then all that really matters is that it's done within the bandwidth constraints. HDMI doesn't need to know the details of the contents of that bitstream.


Indeed, and I wouldn't expect a receiver to have that capability. It's just not practical to keep adding analog inputs for whatever channel configurations may be dreamed up.


I was replying based on memory of when I read it. It doesn't explicitly say it can decode 11.x. But on page 90, it says:

This clearly suggests that it's capable of decoding native discrete front height and front wide channels from the source material. You could make the argument that this might only work if there were no side or rear surround channels, but the only reason to think that would be if you felt there was a hard limit as to how many channels could be embedded into a bitstream.

Of course, it's all moot unless and until 11.x source material becomes available.

I want to use my HTPC and PRO AMPS instead of buying a receiver.
I don't have any external sources of sound besides the internal DVD player and downloaded movies. I am not worried about connecting the sound card to an external source.
What do I need to know?

I want to be able to decode HD DTS and all the latest surround sound from Blue Ray Discs.

Whats a recommended sound card for 5.1 sound?

I need to use analog, so what sound card can do this well?

The Auzentech range of cards, with either high end op-amps, or ones that can be switched are a good bet. Asus also does some good cards with high end DACs. Since you won't need HDMI, you can probably get something under $150 easily. Apologies for not being able to give you model numbers. If the X-Plosion from Auzentech will suffice for you, you could get a great deal. I sold mine locally for $40 recently, and I'll probably sell my second one for just $30.
Finally, on-board audio from the Realtek 889 chipsets and above are supposed to be decent too, but I suspect not as good as a discrete card.

Thanks for taking the time to address these points, Darin. I understand that about Wikipedia, which is why I was careful to mention that that was the source of my info.
However, it's not the only website that states this. It does make sense, though, that bandwidth is the limitation and that would apply to uncompressed audio, limiting it to 8 channels. You're right that in theory compressed audio could carry more channels if the bandwidth isn't exceeded, even if lossless.

Where do you download movies with TrueHD/DTS-HD audio tracks?

Anyway, using ArcSoft Audio Decoder HD in a DirecShow player is the only way to decode DTS-HD properly in PC (with two exceptions: Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD + PowerDVD and Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe + TMT).

Haven't you read this post (assuming you use a H67 Mini-ITX mb with a PCIe x16 slot)?

From what I've read and remember. If audio is decoded to PCM, HDMI is limited to 8 audio channels. If the audio is bitstreamed, I know that Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD can support up to 13.1 and 15.1 channels respectively although I'm not sure if any receivers support this. The Dolby specification for Blu-ray spec doesn't allow more than 7.1 channels

Search for Via Vinyl VT1828S, it's 10 channel chip.