Originally posted by: stelleg151
Originally posted by: CSMR
Originally posted by: stelleg151
So reading over at DIYAudio as well as some other very respected audio sites, the consensus seems to be that the E-Mu is the best bang for the buck if you are looking for really good quality sound from the PC with onboard DACs.
Now the question is: can it play games with surround sound and movies with DD and DTS?
Havent been able to find definitive answers online, hoping someone might know here.
You would need an E-MU 1820, 1820m, 1616, or 1616m to do this as the other cards only have stereo analogue output. With these cards since there are many analogue outputs it must be possible to route multichannel sound to these outputs. You would need software to do the decoding. I can't confirm this for sure as haven't any experience with multichannel sound.
Actually the 1212 has 4 1/4" outputs, which would translate into 7.1 if got w*orking correctly. From what Ive heard finding software decoders of DD and DTS is really difficult because they tend to sell their decoders to make money, thus a publicly available one might not exist.
I know some people have given up on trying to find a jack of all trades cards and have moved to dual soundcard setups. You could get uncompromised music playback from one card and than get another card for better gaming support. Probably wouldn't be the best option for you though considering you're running straight to t-amps and would have to buy some sort of input switch (if not something more elaborate) to get that to work without physically having to change wires.
you hit it on the head. Ive been thinking of using onboard for games if I cant get them to work on my emu, but along with some sort of switch I would also need to go through every program and tell it which sound device to use, which would be extremely lame, if possible at all.
I think Ill try for a while longer and then start looking elsewhere.