Dolby 5.1 using PC for games..How (1 Viewer)

[Richard_s]

I can run movies and cd's from my pc mounted DVD player and set the sound card software to bypass. This allows for me to get the dolby digital 5.1 to plat through my home theater system with a single coax connection (spdif).
I want to be able to run games that have dolby 5.1 on my PC and use my home theater system as my sound system and get the dolby 5.1 sound so here is what I can not figure out. How can I connect the PC sound output to a home theater system for gaming????
My receiver:
Sony 400-Watt DVD-Audio/SACD-Ready Home Theater Receiver
Model: STR-DE475 (if a different reciever is needed I can still return this one)
5.1-channel inputs allow this receiver to accept signals from multichannel audio components like DVD-Audio and SACD players. Dolby Digital/DTS decoders provide theater sound.
This has a single coax input and all of the PC sound cards that I can find split the digital dolby into three outputs (the 5.1 stream is not on a single spdif connection). So how can I deal with this. maybe there is a soundcard that will work.
Thanks

 

[Matt DeVillier]

Richard,

there are currently no games which have Dolby Digital audio - though many have 3D audio via Directsound3D. The only way you can get DD audio from anything other than DVDs is with a sound card/chipset which does real-time DD encoding, like Nvidia's Nforce chipset. You can get 5.1-channel audio from your games by connecting the 6 analog output channels from the sound card to the 6-channel input on your receiver (this usually requires (3) 1/8" stereo jack to RCA patch cables, but depends on the sound card).

 

[Hugh M]

those three different jacks you are speaking of, are indeed pairs of analog outs. These would correspond to your receivers 5.1 inputs.

The digital output from the sound card could be a jack that looks similar or it could be an RCA jack, or an optical jack. But never does the digital get split into three different signals.

I don't think the nforce sound processor does this very well at this time. And that is currently the only PC option there is for realtime dolby encoding.

With a good soundcard and a good game, you should good pretty good sound from the analog outs into your 5.1 inputs on your receiver.

The cool thing would be if game developers could encode some of the movie sections with 5.1 AC3. This is real easy to do, and if you had a sound system hooked up that could do analog and digital you would be set. This would work only if your sound system would auto switch between the analogs and digital input though, or if they were both on the same device inputs(eg. Video1, DVD/LD, VCR).

If money is no object, and you want digital audio from gaming, get an XBOX. Quite good for the home theater. You could end up spending alot of time getting the analog 5.1 outputs, the whole PC system, the games, and everything all working together. With the Xbox most of this is done for you. I've already done all of this, so I don't have an Xbox.

 

[Richard_s]

Thanks. My receiver does have 5.1 analog inputs but I need to make an interface cable to use the header on my soundcard. I will give that a try.

 

[Richard_s]

Hugh M
Just the information I was looking for.
Is there a link to what you had to do to get yours to work.
If you don't mind I would really appreciate any information you can share on how you got your system to work either by posting here or e-mail me at [email protected]
Also what sound card do you have. I have the CL live xgamer but getting another soundcard is an option if I can get analog 5.1 looks like digital is not here yet. Computers is a hobby so I build my own (all AMD)the system I am working on is a tiger tyan dual 1.4ghz system.
Appreciate any help you can give
Thanks again