Not unless their Dell PC's include digital output.....

Since my last PC refresh in March 2005 I have been using Dolby-Digital Live provided by the Intel P4 Desktop board D925XECV2. This motherboard has the Realtek ALC-880D so the hardware takes care of the DDL encoding. The D925XECV2 will do analog 7.1 output, however I decided to go with the toslink optical output to a seperate Dolby/DTS/PCM 5.1 decoder. After the Realtek HD Audio drivers do their job, the Intel Audio Studio v1.52 (Sonic Focus) massages the digital audio further before its conversion to photons...

The optical output goes to a computer-grade Creative Inspire GD-580 5.1 decoder/speaker system. Took a while to get a good set of WHQL Realtek v1.51 drivers to go with the WinXP KB888111 (SP2) hotfix for HD Audio support. Now that is all sorted out I am quite happy with the on-board sound provided by the Intel D925XECV2 motherboard. Allows any 2-channel DOS game executing under the NTVDM or DosBox to have 5.1 surround sound. Better sound than the original DOS platform, with more choice for sound card emulation and MIDI support.

Side benefit is bit-perfect 44,100kHz transmissiion down the optical cable with auto adjustment for 48,000kHz output from DVDs. The S/N of the audio output has a limiting factor of the external Creative decoder box DACs and circuitry. The ALC-880 digital output has around a ~100dB S/N ratio, don't know what the Creative GD580 decoder is but the unused DACs on my Intel D925XECV2 motherboard have a published S/N ratio of around 86dB.

Some have raved about the NVidia SoundStorm DDL of yore - the Intel/Realtek solution is still being sold and works quite well for the WinXp environment. Now that Microsoft has 'deprecated' 😳 the Creative propreitary APU and EAX sound effects in Vista, it looks as if they have made Intel happy that the extra cores in the duo and quad core CPUs will now have something useful to do while keeping those lazy extra cores working... 😁

dvwjr

dvwjr wrote:

The D925XECV2 will do analog 7.1 output, however I decided to go with the toslink optical output to a seperate Dolby/DTS/PCM 5.1 decoder.

Yup. I think the great thing about digital output is the convenience of channeling the sound to an external surround receiver. However, without DDL capability, one will only get plain stereo sound when playing games.

Of course we can still use discrete, multi-channel analog output for games, but most surround receivers has only one set of multi-channel analog input (as oppossed to S/PDIF inputs).

I don't see what's exactly wrong with analogue outputs. At the end of the day if your internal soundcard can decode DD/DTS itself and send the analogue output to decent 5.1 speakers attached to your PC then it's one less box to own/operate/upgrade.

A separate decoder is of use if 1) your internal soundcard is basic or 2) it's not basic but rubbish or 3) you have your PC near your home cinema system and want to make use of the same system.

I have recently bought an external decoder and matching speakers, namely the Logitech Z-5400. I primarily bought it because it has multiple inputs and I have quite a few midi devices around here, which used to connect to the line-in of my sound card. Now I can listen to them independently of my pc.

As for games, I still use 5.1 analog for modern games, because my sound card doesn't support that much channels in digital (real-time that is). But when I play old games designed for just stereo playback, I use digital and then let my decoder mix the sound to 5.1 or in some cases just let it duplicate it to the rear speakers (stereo x2). Same goes for when I'm watching a DVD on my PC, I switch to digital, as the sound quality is much better. No noise interference really makes it much better. And the decoder allows some extra options as well. It's really convenient to use.

I think digital sound isn't really necessary for most people, but as stated before, it's really handy when you have multiple devices which you want to connect. One thing is for sure, my next sound card will have 5.1 digital as well...

Lennart wrote:

As for games, I still use 5.1 analog for modern games, because my sound card doesn't support that much channels in digital (real-time that is).

Yup. It's called 'Dolby Digital Live', and frankly, not many sound cards support it.

What sound card are you using, by the way?

I use an ordinary onboard Realtek. So it hasn't got a very good analog output, interference is clearly audible when turning up the volume.

I read some more about Dolby Digital Live yesterday, interesting technology. Too bad it isn't implemented in alot of cards. The best card I could find which does support it is the Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 . Now that one has some interesting specifications. 😁

Lennart wrote:

I read some more about Dolby Digital Live yesterday, interesting technology. Too bad it isn't implemented in alot of cards. The best card I could find which does support it is the Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 . Now that one has some interesting specifications. 😁

I should make note that the card supports Windows 98, so it is one of the cards I consider for my Win98 legacy system. 😁

But alas, it only support A3D 1.0 and EAX 2.0 --not exactly "best of both worlds" sound card (hence this thread. I wonder how many Win98 games need EAX higher than 2.0. 😖