SScorpio wrote on 2020-10-29, 15:44:
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-10-29, 13:00:
The Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 supported Dolby AC-3 decoding in some way. Here's a contemporary review.
Not sure if it could do this via SPDIF though.
AC-3 Decoding would just be taking the signal from a DVD and splitting it to analog 5.1 outputs. For a game's regular audio to have a digital 5.1 Dolby output you'd need an encoder, not a decoder.
AC-3 audio is actually supported in Aureal Vortex 2 driver v2041, though not in v2015.
Also, I did some testing with Aureal Vortex 2 and positional audio and reverb sounds different in some games in v2015. For example, in Deus Ex with v2041 I was getting weird reflections for some sounds (eg: the pidgeons at the beginning, they had excessive sound refraction) and some sounds were missing (seagulls and seawaves at the dock, first level). The demos sound identical in both driver revisions strangely...
Differences for now:
- driver 2015:
- positional audio through toslink is identical to line out in headphone mode
- Deus Ex has no forced "closed room" reverb in all environments, more sounds are reproduced with correct 3d positioning
- DisablePCIDetection and no realmodedos workarounds do not work, disables mpu-401, joystick, modem and sbpro emulation if the "soundcard not on primary bus" error occurs
- driver 2041:
- positional audio in headphone mode DOES NOT work correctly through toslink, but it's fine through line out
- Deus Ex applies a forced "closed room" reverb to sounds in all situations, some sounds are missing and 3d positioning seems less accurate (to me)
- DisablePCIDetection and similar ini tweak workarounds work normally
You win some, you lose some I guess... 😁