Is my lack of surround sound nuance because of my soundcard or the players? (1 Viewer)

[Ken Burkstrum]

I notice sound on the comp isnt as rich compared to say my dvd player. The way bass is used is different for isntance. I also noticed that quicktime handle bass better then windows media player, or atleast with the samples I tried.

I noticed there was some bass material that showed up using quicktime but never showed up in windows media player. I never could figure out if it was the compression or the players or the soundcard that was taking some oomph away from surround sound as well. I have dolby digital and dts trailers, I figure they use the same bitrate dvd is and yet their lacking, on a small scale of course, only people like us would really be able to pick that stuff out but it bothers the heck out of me.

I think my soundcard is doing the processing before it gets to my reciever instead of letting it go right through to the reciever. I heard that's not wanted but for the life of I can't figure out any kind of way to do that in the players or in my soundcard control panel.

 

[Rommel_L]

Unless you're SPDIF as your audio out, the soundcard will downmix it to DD2.0...

 

[Ken Chan]

Some sound cards (or the DVD player software) will decode Dolby or DTS into 6-channel audio. If you have a 5.1 or 7.1 computer speaker system with three pairs of analog connectors, it should be the same.

If you specific help, you should mention the DVD player software, sound card, and speaker system you're using.