Sound and Digital out?

[woel]

Hi!

Just bought a new surround system. Now I've connected the computer to the receiver with a digital coax cable from the digital output on my soundblaster to the digital coax in on the receiver. This works just great with both music and movies. I get full dolby digital 5.1 in those movies with sound encoded in that format. My question is now: How do I get multi-channel sound in games? My soundcard supports 4.1 or 4.0 sound analog but I don't wan't to use analog because digital is way cooler.

Thanks!

/Leo

[az]

There is no way to get digital game surround sound out of your soundcard. It would need a real-time dolby digital encoder (presumable nForce chipsets had this, but I don't know really).

AZ

[woel]

Then I will have to get a sound card of that type for doom 3 I guess...

[az]

I meant the audio part on nForce chipsets. I don't even know if this feature ever worked, or if it is still in the newest chipsets.

Just use a high quality soundcard and analog 5.1 connection.

AZ

[Wombat]

Originally posted by az
There is no way to get digital game surround sound out of your soundcard. It would need a real-time dolby digital encoder (presumable nForce chipsets had this, but I don't know really).

AZ

I think this is incorrect. The game has its own encoder, and the digital output would go out to the external receiver, where the DD is then decoded.

That's how it works with my Live!, anyway.

[az]

Doom 3 has a real-time software dolby digital encoder? Wow! (I didn't follow the hype much, if you can't tell)

If it indeed has this, any soundcard that can pass an unaltered bitstream through its digital out should suffice. In practice, if you can pass dolby digital from a DVD through a digital connection, you're set. Pretty much every recent soundcard can do this.

AZ

[woel]

Well I my brand new reasonably priced harman/kardon avr-2550 receiver don't have analog 5.1 inputs, so I really need a digital source for anything more than 2 channels I think. So then I either need software that output dolby digital or dts sound or hardware that can convert into one of these formats. Let's hope I can find some kind of solution...

[Liquid Snake]

Originally posted by Wombat
I think this is incorrect. The game has its own encoder, and the digital output would go out to the external receiver, where the DD is then decoded.

That's how it works with my Live!, anyway.

Cool! That answers my question in the <A HREF="http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?threadid=49184">other thread</A>.

[Helevitia]

I tried getting the sound working again tonight with no luck. I have the same problem as woel. (side note: is woel, Joel is sheeps clothing get it, woel(wool) hahaha! )

I think I'll go search around the doom forums for an answer.

I do the same thing. I go optical out on my mobo, to optical in on my receiver. No matter what though, I can only get two channels to work.

Dave

[Wombat]

I've heard that setting the values in the game is not enough. You'll have to go into the Windows sound control panel and play with the speaker settings.

[Jammrock]

For Audigy based cards, you'll want to open Audio HQ ... and then some applet I can't remember ... and make sure you have SP/DIF pass-through enabled. There are like three options, and you just need to play with them until it works. My othr rig is off so I don't know exactly.

That should pass the raw audio stream directly to the reciever and get your surround sound action going.

Jammrock

[Helevitia]

I should mention that I sold my Audigy yesterday and I am using the onboard Realtek. There are 6 analog connectors and one optical(this is the S/PDIF, right?)

OK, so my choices for S/PDIF are:

1. No output
2. Output digital only
3. Output digital and analog
4. S/PDIF-In to S/PDIF-Out pass through mode

I tried allof them and never could I hear sound out of all speakers. Only the typical stereo sound. Also, yesterday, before I knew about the S/PDIF settings, when I clicked the "surround sound" in Doom3, it would complain that I didn't detect 5.1(or maybe it was DD, don't remember exactly).
Today when I tried it, after foolign with the S/PDIF settings, it doesn't complain and let's me enable "surround sound".

My receiver never seems to auto detect digital either :/

[Marshmallowman]

Typically the spdif pass on most sound cards/integrated sound only work on movies, never for games(expet nforce)

But I can verify that the nforce 2 does encode in realtime in all the games that I have played. Very nice to use, especially since it bypasses the less than best DAC on my a7n8x dlx.

Don't know about doom3 and a software encoding.

[woel]

Originally posted by Helevitia
(side note: is woel, Joel is sheeps clothing get it, woel(wool) hahaha! )

hehe! Well actually it is my name backwards with the first letter of my last name.

I'm not sure if u other guys with digital has more problems than multi-channel in games? As I wrote earlier I get PCM stereo for games and music and DD for movies (I probably get DTS also but I only have one movie with DTS and I havn't tried that one).

And btw my new surround system sounds great!

[Jammrock]

yes, the optical is the S/PDIF. S/PDIF is a digital audio signal protocol standard with 2 delivery methods (that I know are common at least): 75 ohm coax, and optical TOSLink (being the connector type).

Anyway ... here's the official Activision support FAQ:

https://activision.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/activision.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=12712&p_created=1091552266&p_sid=PiBlR9ih&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PWRmbHQmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTI1MjImcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfbmwmcF9wcm9kX2x2bDE9JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWRvb20gMyBzdXJyb3VuZCBzb3VuZA**&p_li=

Jammrock