How can I get surround sound from my PC?

[GeneralOreo]

I have an X-Fi card, and a JVC SU-DH1 Dolby Headphone adapter for my headphones... Now, the adapter takes in 5.1 sound from an optical cable and converts it to Dolby Headphone. What I need is that 5.1 signal from my PC. This is my card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16829102006

There's PCM, LPCM, Dolby stuff, DTS stuff, decoding and encoding and I'm not sure what happens where in the cycle. Do I need a new card, one with dolby formats? Or buy a receiver? Can I even connect that to my PC? is my card fine? I heard LPCM is better for gaming. What about PCM? I heard it only goes to 2.1 or 2 and then heard that it can do 5.1... The non-dolby Creative cards all support multi-channel, how are they doing it? Propriety Creative format or PCM or what?

Whew. I don't need an answer for every exact question, I'm just trying to get across what I need and what I have no idea about - everything regarding sound...

Please help.

 

[Billb2]

How about the owner's manual. It clearly lists the speaker connections. Pictures and all.

Or am I missing something?

 

[GeneralOreo]

Did you just read the topic title?

 

[PurdueRy]

Your OP is all over the place we need to take this in steps....when you say get surround sound...do you mean from games, movies, or both?

 

[GeneralOreo]

OK, let me just ask one question and things will be much clearer then: How do the Creative cards, the ones w/o Dolby Digital/DTS. output their surround sound? PCM? LPCM?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: GeneralOreo
OK, let me just ask one question and things will be much clearer then: How do the Creative cards, the ones w/o Dolby Digital/DTS. output their surround sound? PCM? LPCM?

Ok, listen ya gotta work with me here. I can't answer that question because its already wrong.

Creative cards do output Dolby digital and DTS. They won't encode to it however. So, back to my original question, when you say you want surround sound, do you want it from movies, games or both?

 

[GeneralOreo]

Both, but games are the priority.

OK so there are Creative cards that have Dolby Digital and DTS hardware encoding as part of their specs, usually they're the most expensive ones. You'll telling me that all Creative cards however output Dolby Digital/DTS? So you can use a receiver connected to your card to encode those signals?

In my case I have a JVC SU-DH1, this is meant to be as a portable device and works with laptops so I'm guessing it encodes the Dolby Digital before converting it to Dolby Headphone, unless all the laptops out there have high-end sound cards with hardware encoding...

Anyway I might pickup an optical cable in an hour or so, and I'll try it. The problem is games don't show all the options in the sound section, they change depending on your sound settings before launching the game. I'm playing Far Cry right now and according to the manual it should output Dolby 5.1, so we'll see what happens when I connect everything and launch the game.

BTW, is EAX still needed when you're in surround? I thought it was mostly for 3D sound effects, and if you're using actual surround than what happens to it - disabled, not used?

 

[WraithETC]

The only way to get surround sound out of the an x-fi if it is not a DVD or something that has pre encoded dolby digital is to connect the 3 different speaker outs from the card.

 

[JKing76]

Originally posted by: GeneralOreo

OK so there are Creative cards that have Dolby Digital and DTS hardware encoding as part of their specs, usually they're the most expensive ones. You'll telling me that all Creative cards however output Dolby Digital/DTS? So you can use a receiver connected to your card to encode those signals?

No. Creative cards do not support Dolby Digital or DTS encoding.

You can get 5.1 audio over SPDIF from a DVD because the DVD already contains the compressed DTS audio data stream. The DVD playing program reads this from the disc, and sends it to the sound card, telling the sound card that it doesn't need to do any processing. The sound card isn't doing anything other than routing the data stream to the receiver.

That is what was meant by the Creative cards being able to output DD/DTS.

Games, unlike DVD, are not producing DTS encoded audio. They are producing uncompressed PCM data streams. SPDIF can't handle 5 channels of uncompressed audio. You would need to compress that data -before- sending it over SPDIF. Specifically, you would need to compress it according to the Dolby Digital or DTS specifications, because those are what the receiver knows how to decompress.

Unfortunately, the Creative cards do not support encoding the uncompressed audio streams into DD or DTS.

However, if your computer is powerful enough, you -may- be able to run a third-party audio driver that will, in software, encode your audio into DTS. Basically, the game sends the uncompressed audio data to the driver, the driver compresses and encodes it, and then tells the sound card to pass the now-encoded stream through SPDIF without any hardware processing -- just like the DVD player does.

Check out the following links:

Info about this third-party driver:
http://www.rossanodembech.it/html/kx.html

The real-time encoder:
http://www.driverheaven.net/ge...e-5-1-ac3-encoder.html

 

[GeneralOreo]

OK, so what exactly do all those 5.1/7.1 cards and speaker sets all over newegg do? Just play surround for movies? Hell even my on-board sound oes 7.1 I think.

So it doesn't actually do that for games? What's going on. I hate this stuff.

You know what, I'm just going to forget about surround on my PC. I can't understand something unless I know every detail and I have no idea about anything related to sound formats and how do cards/receivers/content move those signals. I'm thinking of even getting rid of the SU-DH1 even though it would be easy to use it with a console, I don't want to have that kind of imbalance between my console and PC gaming experiences. blah.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: GeneralOreo
OK, so what exactly do all those 5.1/7.1 cards and speaker sets all over newegg do? Just play surround for movies? Hell even my on-board sound oes 7.1 I think.

So it doesn't actually do that for games? What's going on. I hate this stuff.

You know what, I'm just going to forget about surround on my PC. I can't understand something unless I know every detail and I have no idea about anything related to sound formats and how do cards/receivers/content move those signals. I'm thinking of even getting rid of the SU-DH1 even though it would be easy to use it with a console, I don't want to have that kind of imbalance between my console and PC gaming experiences. blah.

To get surround sound from games you have to use the 5/6/7.1 analog outs on your card. Unfortunately, I don't see 5/6/7.1 analog ins on that DH device of yours. So the best you can do is get dolby headphone sound from movies. I suppose you could try the software real time encoding...but I found it to be very shaky. Perhaps its been improved now.

 

[GeneralOreo]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16829156005

What if I buy that card? The SU-DH1 adapter needs a 5.1 signal through optical. Now that card would compress the signal to go through optical and reach the adapter intact, full 5.1 read to be converted to Dolby Headphone. Would it work? The card is nearly ~200 so I want to be sure...

 

[GeneralOreo]

OK wait, my sound card only has an optical out. Everything else is the regular 3.5mm jacks and whatever. Now a lot of people have surround setups for their PCs, and play games, this sound card is a 7.1 'extremegamer' one... I'm assuming that it compresses up to 7.1 into that optical out and sends it to whatever speakers it's connected to. Like for example these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16836116153

I mean I still can't believe you can't actdually gete surround on games unless you have the best high-end and yet I see surround setups in threads and such all the time, and the speakers for these setups are cheap and all over newegg. It can't be that all the people that bought that stuff have been fooled and can't tell they're not getting surround in games...? There's something here I'm not understanding. I haven't slept in quite a while, just had a couple of beers, and have been having a really bad month with another coming so... forgive any stupidity please.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: GeneralOreo
OK wait, my sound card only has an optical out. Everything else is the regular 3.5mm jacks and whatever. Now a lot of people have surround setups for their PCs, and play games, this sound card is a 7.1 'extremegamer' one... I'm assuming that it compresses up to 7.1 into that optical out and sends it to whatever speakers it's connected to. Like for example these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16836116153

I mean I still can't believe you can't actdually gete surround on games unless you have the best high-end and yet I see surround setups in threads and such all the time, and the speakers for these setups are cheap and all over newegg. It can't be that all the people that bought that stuff have been fooled and can't tell they're not getting surround in games...? There's something here I'm not understanding. I haven't slept in quite a while, just had a couple of beers, and have been having a really bad month with another coming so... forgive any stupidity please.

Read what I say carefully:

1. Your card does not have an optical out. It has a digital out which is in digital Coax format.

2. I said, people connect their surround speaker sets up with 3 analog cables which carry 5.1 audio from non-encoded sources. This gets them true surround sound from games.

3. Your card does not do any encoding.

4. http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16829271001 That is a much cheaper card that also does encoding. I really don't think this is worth the cost to you just to use dolby headphone on, but that's up to you.

5. Why are you so obsessed with using this dolby headphone device? Why not just use your sound card's CMSS ability which does much the same thing? Quote from the specs of the xtremegamer card:

The card's audio processor, with help from Creative's CMSS-3D technology, is able to remix your stereo audio into surround sound?even through stereo headphones. This is ideal for playing first-person shooters so you can hear your enemies before it's too late. EAX Advanced HD technology further improves game audio tracks providing a more immersive experience.

 

[GeneralOreo]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy5. Why are you so obsessed with using this dolby headphone device? Why not just use your sound card's CMSS ability which does much the same thing?

Because I want to use Dolby Headphone. I'll try that CMSS feature but I doubt it'll be in the same league as the dolby one. From that quote it looks like it remixes stereo sound into surround, which is not what Dolby Headphone does. DH takes an already surround signal and decodes it for headphones.

I'll look into that card you linked to that's cheaper and does the encoding I need, it only supports EAX up to 2.0 though.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your help and all the info you posted.

 

[Gooberlx2]

If you want surround sounds in games from an X-Fi card, for your headphones...then just hook up to the regular output and select headphones as your speaker setup. The X-Fi does an excellent job of surround placement on headphones. However, the X-Fi does not do DDLive/DTSConnect, so you're not going to get the 5.1 signal your headphone adapter is expecting for games. For movies and video files with AC3 tracks, then the card can do DD/DTS passthrough.