For those who own D3: Can you do Dolby Digital?

[Seoulstriker]

Is it possible to select Dolby Digital or DTS or Pro Logic II in Doom 3? I'm wondering because I have a home theater system I want to hook Doom3 to, but my Audigy 2 ZS does not have RCA out, and I don't want to pay $20 for the adapters. I do have stereo and digital out that I want to use.


Thanks for the help.

[|JuiceZ|]

That’s a good question. From what I've been reading though, D3 engine doesn't use your sound card but your cpu for processing so the DD decoder on your A2 would be useless.

[Seoulstriker]

That’s a good question. From what I've been reading though, D3 engine doesn't use your sound card but your cpu for processing so the DD decoder on your A2 would be useless.

No, you see the point is that I just want Doom3 to pass through any encoded sounds through the stereo jack so that my home theater receiver can decode it and put it into 5.1 surround sound. I want D3 to encode into DD and then send it through to the theater system.

Wouldn't it be pointless for Doom3 to have Dolby Digital if it is decoded right away by the sound card?

[|JuiceZ|]

No, you see the point is that I just want Doom3 to pass through any encoded sounds through the stereo jack so that my home theater receiver can decode it and put it into 5.1 surround sound. I want D3 to encode into DD and then send it through to the theater system.

Wouldn't it be pointless for Doom3 to have Dolby Digital if it is decoded right away by the sound card?

I’m not familiar with the sound options in the game so please forgive me but if it has an option to encode the sound into DD, your external receiver should be able to decode it & put it into 5.1 just fine. That’s my plan w/ the z680’s as well.

[npras42]

Depends on how you have your Sound Card set-up and hooked to your receiver. In games, the Sound Card can't output 5.1 through SPDIF, only through the multiple output channels.

If you connect these up to your receiver (Home Theater System) then select Surround Sound in the game options, you will get 5.1. Its not Dolby Digital as far as I can tell. Its just 5.1. If it was using Dolby encoding or DTS encoding I'm sure they'd have to advertise it somewhere, and I have yet to see it in the game.

[CaptNKILL]

My Soundstorm does Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Pro Logic encoding in hardware, doesnt require the game to do a thing :rolleyes:

[npras42]

What do you mean? It does it on the soundcard hardware? Thats what I was saying... the Audigy2 ZS (or any other Creative card as far as I know) will only do games AC3 decoding on the hardware and then output it to the individual outputs on the card (i.e. Front L/R, Sub/Centre, Rear L/R). However, It wont send a pure digital AC3 signal out of the SPDIF for a game. I don't know why, but thats the way they do it.

[FierceDeityLink]

What do you mean? It does it on the soundcard hardware? Thats what I was saying... the Audigy2 ZS (or any other Creative card as far as I know) will only do games AC3 decoding on the hardware and then output it to the individual outputs on the card (i.e. Front L/R, Sub/Centre, Rear L/R). However, It wont send a pure digital AC3 signal out of the SPDIF for a game. I don't know why, but thats the way they do it.
From what I've heard, kX's drivers can do that. I had heard of them and suggested it to someone on a message board, who later reported back that the beta drivers can output AC3 over optical.

[npras42]

Really? For games!?? That would be awesome. Would cut my cabling down so much, and I wouldn't need to keep on changing channels on my receiver when I play a game!

[FierceDeityLink]

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1

The AC97 Codecs used in SBLive! cards are rather noisy devices (when compared to I2S Codecs), and this leads to some quality problems. As a rule, SBLive Rear outputs have much better Signal To Noise Ratio (SNR), Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and Channel Separation (acs) since they use the I2S Codec. So, if you want to get better sound quality for music playback it is recommended that you plug your speakers into the 'Rear Out' and enable the 'Swap Front and Rear' kX Mixer option (the swap is enabled by default).

The Audigy and Audigy2 cards use both AC97 and I2S Codecs for Front output and this theoretically gives you rather good Front quality. But nevertheless, the AC97 Codec causes some distortion and thus the same procedure is recommended for use with Audigy / Audigy2 cards as well.
It's good enough for me...

[Seoulstriker]

Damn. Oh well. It can do 3d virtualization at least, right?


I don't want to have to buy the miniplug-->RCA adapters for $6 a piece. :(

[npras42]

Hmmm... sounds good, but it doesn't support EAX 3.0 from what I can see in the [to do] list. I'll keep my eye on it. It also says it hasn't been tested on Audigy2 ZS, but you have one and it works for you, right?

[FierceDeityLink]

Erm, yeah, I was going to buy the A2ZS, but my paycheck is late. It works fine with my Audigy, though.

[ragejg]

Hmm, I'll be going through the same dilema shortly, as my PC will soon be hooked to my AIWA reciever which supports Dolby Digital and DTS... and I'd like to somehow hook my Audigy1 up to it for as good of sound as possible... and I don't know crap about home theatre sound setup OR the particulars of setting up surround sound properly with a PC sound card, since my current workspace confines me to a 2 speaker + subwoofer setup...

[FierceDeityLink]

If you don't have the breakout/5.25" connection box from Creative, you can buy the Hoontech DB III (not sure about model exactly). It fits in a PCI slot and provides optical in/out and coaxial in/out, etc. I think it's around $15.