Good bye AMD hello Intel?

[Marshmallowman]

hehe...with intel you may *need* a hardware DD encoder, but with AMD being that much faster you can still run faster using software encoding.

I am a bit disappointed in the apparent lack of dd in upcoming integratred stuff, becasue their nforce 2 sound storm is simply excellent. I think it would have been good idea for NV to make it a separate addon chip that way cheap skate mobo's could avoid it, and other companies could make mobo addon's or simply make PCI sound cards using it.


But I must say almost all sound cards(integrated or otherwise) do digital passthru so you can watch movies with full digital sound.
Also 5.1 in games, while nice still takes a back seat to a good set of headphones (don't mention the bs 5.1 headphones )

And if you weally need to surround sound in games 4.1 does a pretty decent job, especialy considering the lack of a centre channel is not important in games because games do not hinge so heavily on centering conversions.

Howerver I think choosing intel simply because it has HW 5.1 is very simplistic and will leave you sitting in the usual upgradeless intel pit.. especialy now that the p4 line has maxed out.

If you bought a decent amd 64 system you will able to upgrade 5 G + system and it will sound just as good.

But it is your money I guess...

[Novdid]

Originally posted by woel
Encode in software in realtime without all my cpu time going to waste in games?

If you get an A64, you will have those spare cycles over a P4 in games, no?

[woel]

Originally posted by Novdid
If you get an A64, you will have those spare cycles over a P4 in games, no?

That might be correct but I would like to see a software encoder that actually works. Tried ac3filter and I have not gotten it to work with a game yet and I don't want it to add or remove channels. Btw ac3filter encoding worked really bad on my system. The sound disappeared after a few seconds.

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
And if you weally need to surround sound in games 4.1 does a pretty decent job, especialy considering the lack of a centre channel is not important in games because games do not hinge so heavily on centering conversions.

I can't get more than 2 channels from games since the digital connection only support pcm or ac3. On analog I only get stereo since my receiver only has stereo input.


Can anyone explain how to get ac3filter to work correctly. With no channels added or removed. Just encode to dd when there are more than two channels in use. And at the same time don't touch ac3-encoded movies just pass them.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

Originally posted by Novdid
If you get an A64, you will have those spare cycles over a P4 in games, no?

lol, its funny b/c its true

[Marshmallowman]

That may be a limitation of the sb Live, it will only ever encode two channel.

Maybe the alternative low latency k- something drivers will work for that?

On my sblive I bought a hoontech digital io card, and I think that gave me 4 channel digital out?...

But I used my nforce 2 board for gaming now....5.1 in games is to easy, I just select it from the options in the nv mixer app

If the acr filter actualy does work for abit, then it maybe the ugly via/sbilve PCI latency monster, eg change mobo.

What does your cpu utilisation do if you try play music/sound through ac3 ?

[woel]

Havn't tried music with ac3 yet. But to encode to ac3 in movies coded in mp3 did not seem to use a lot of cpu. But then again it just worked for a few seconds.

The only way to get more than 2 channels for me is if the signal is ac3 encoded, dd dts... can't use two digital connections on my receiver at the same time.

[Wombat]

The Live! will output a DD stream through the digital output, I did it with a lot of movies. Encoding...I have no idea.

[Fluff]

Maybe Dolby Digital is just too old a spec for nvidia to be bothered with. With all these new formats coming out.

I honestly think that they will have some thing special come out for the Audio market. Probably firewire based output (due to future audio standards needing copy protection). Plug that into your home cinema reciever and you are away. They basically need to introduce something that won't upset the high end market for cinema creation studios.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Fluff
Maybe Dolby Digital is just too old a spec for nvidia to be bothered with.

No, they're just too cheap to pay for it.

[Jammrock]

I want to see computer audio cards hardware DTS ES decoding Hopefully once Blu-ray hits PCs in a less expensive format we will.

Jammrock

[Fluff]

I want to see computer audio cards. That pass out the DVD-A (MLP) stream to a reciever / surround processor for decoding rather than using the dac's inside the PC.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Fluff
I want to see computer audio cards. That pass out the DVD-A (MLP) stream to a reciever / surround processor for decoding rather than using the dac's inside the PC.

Don't you have that now? I have a SPDIF from my DVD to my Audigy, and a digital out from there.

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by Fluff
I want to see computer audio cards. That pass out the DVD-A (MLP) stream to a reciever / surround processor for decoding rather than using the dac's inside the PC.

DVD consortium doesn't allow digital outputof DVD-A. Scared people will crack the stream and distribute untouched DVD-A files.

*shrugs*

Jammrock

[Fluff]

The DVD consortium does allow the passing of the encrypted digital signal to a decoder that is compliant with the copy protection. The firewire interface will be used.

http://www.dvdforum.com/images/Guideline1394V10R0_20020911.pdf

http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/1201/31.dvddigital.shtml

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by Fluff
The DVD consortium does allow the passing of the encrypted digital signal to a decoder that is compliant with the copy protection. The firewire interface will be used.

http://www.dvdforum.com/images/Guideline1394V10R0_20020911.pdf

http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/...ddigital.shtml

True, but firewire audio transfer stuff is hard to find and not heavily implemented yet.