[PeterS]

I'm looking for a Sound Card which will be able to take the multi-channel sound from a computer game and put it out the Digital SPDIF port as Dolby Digital. As I understand it there are some motherboards which do this, so there must be a good quality sound card which does.


A quick check of the SoundBlaster line does not reveal this feature.


Thanks

 

[psycho]

funny, this question seems to be asked every week here, i'll look for a link

edit: found this one from a few days ago, http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=459434

 

[CCarncross]

So you want a card that will encode non-DD audio (like DOlby surround or Pro-Logic)from games, and have it magically create DD on the fly? OR are you talking about games that already have DD sound in game? If they already have DD in game, they should already support output through the S/PDIF.


Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your question.

 

[cualexander]

I know exactly what you are talking about and its not currently possible without an onboard audio chip. There isn't a PCI Audio Card that can do real-time hardware encoding of dolby digital. The bandwidth just isn't there. Only the nforce chipsets can do it, and not even all nforce chipsets can do it. Luckily I bought the Asus A7N8X, which turns out is one of the best motherboards for this purpose. Everything I play through it comes out of the digital coax encoded into Dolby Digital. It sounds awesome. Its actually licensed by Dolby, and from what I've heard the nforce4 wasn't even able to aquire a Dolby License...


But if you want bit-perfect audio from the S/PDIF port then you can pick up a Chaintech 710 for really cheap, and I do mean cheap, I can't say the price because I know its frowned upon. Thats the card all the high end audiophiles use because it does absolutely nothing to the audio stream before it comes out the digital port. Doesn't encode to DD, but it doesn't resample the stream like Creative cards do. Any audiophile will tell you to avoid Creative at all costs.