Non-AC3 5.1 variants are annoying me

[oddball]

We now have OGG 5.1, WMA 5.1 and I think also RM9 5.1 (Correct me if I am wrong there).

What is annoying me is that the only way to hear them in 5.1 is with a set of crappy PC speakers connected to your special soundcard connector.

If you want to hear any of these on a decent 5.1 DD/DTS home cinema system you are out of luck. Piping to the SPDIF output makes no difference. Unless it's encoded in DD or DTS all you are gonna hear is PCM stereo.

So I am hoping beyond hope that these new 5.1 formats do not succeed.

[ZeB]

ever heard of soundcards with analog 5.1 output? :)

[tanksimpson]

I hear your pain, Oddball! I've just spent my entire day off from work futzing around with various 5.1 codecs (Real, WMA9, AAC), without much to show for it. I'm a little luckier than you because my nForce board can re-encode 5.1 audio to Dolby Digital on the fly and spit it out the SPDIF. But I can't get the Helix Producer OR the Windows Media Encoder 9 to accept a 5.1 wav generated by either HeadAC3he or BeSweet - both produce error messages. And although I can use Psytel + mp4UI to produce nice 5.1 AAC/mp4 tracks that I can play with WinAmp (FAAD plug-in), there is no suitable mp4 player to playback videos that contain said AAC tracks! Envivio, Apple, DivX Networks... anybody - PLEASE bite the bullet, pay Dolby the friggin license, and provide an mp4 player that supports 6 channel audio! I heard a rumor a while back that somebody was going to combine the xvid or libavcodec(?) MPEG-4 video decoder with the FAAD MPEG-4 audio decoder into some kind of rogue WinAmp 3 plug-in or DirectShow thing - we'll have to wait and see. My conclusion is a little different from yours, though; I'm basically hoping for a new generation of hardware that supports "AAC pass-through" or whatever, I hate Dolby, but I trust them more than I trust Microsoft or Real. Serious hardware support for OGG, as nice as it would be, is probably a pipe dream.

[oddball]

To ZeB: Hey! I don't see why I need to buy a new soundcard and had 6 more cables trailing along to my reciever/amplifier. Especially since it's not as nice as 1 long cable that passes DD/DTS/PCM with no problems whatsoever. Making another 5.1 format is a pain in the butt for those that don't have recoevers that can decode it. M$ and Real/OGG are doing this purely for the soundcard speaker setups it would appear. Leaving out a sizeable chunk of people who'm have nice big fat home cinema systems :)

That nForce card sounds interesting though. Who makes it?

[tanksimpson]

It's actually the motherboard: an MSI K7N420 Pro with the NVIDIA 420D nForce chipset (for Athlons and Durons). The 420D chipset includes ethernet, Geforce 2 MX video, and 5.1 audio built-in. I don't use the onboard video, though - I added a Radeon 9000 Pro to the AGP slot because I needed some good TV output. In addition to analog outputs, there is a digital SPDIF coax output. This is the same audio, by the way, that the Xbox uses, much better than the piece of crap SBLive I used to have. What makes the nForce audio unique is that has the capability to re-encode 5.1 audio to Dolby Digital in real-time and send it through the SPDIF. I have mine connected to a Pioneer VSX-D411 a/v receiver and it works just fine. The NVIDIA control panel for the sound chip is very nice, and includes a little test program to make sure the correct channels are going to the correct speakers. You can also turn the Dolby Digital feature off if you want and just output PCM stereo though the SPDIF. I have WinDVD 3.2 and PowerDVD 4, and neither has any problem passing through the AC3 to the SPDIF. MSI also makes a 415D motherboard which is a little cheaper because it doesn't have the onboard video. Trust me, I know that in the past onboard sound chips sucked, but I think this nForce chipset is as good or better than any consumer soundcard out there.

[ivan_alias]

and nForce2 is coming fast!

[wolfman3105]

@ tanksimpson.
I'm interested in such a nforce mb. if you want to watch a divx or dvd with ac3 or dts just passed through, do you have to turn the ac3- encode-option off or will it work with this setting on too?

[Branxx]

oddball,

The reason for your annoyance is not the PC but your AV receiver that is by design a closed solution.You have installed this new 5.1 codecs on our PC beacuse it was easy to upgrade.

You don't need to change your sound card or run 6 additional cables. Just wait 6-12months and receivers would catch up and you would be able to buy a new one (and sell your old one for 1/5 of the price).

The moral is that PC is the centre of the future AV entertainment set-up and the AV received is the 'oddball'. Get rid of it an feed your hi-fi amps directly from the PC. Use the proceeds of the receiver sale to buy some cheap but exceptional quality sound cards like RME, DAL or LynxTWO.

If every two months new 5.1 codec arrives, just download and install the file and off you go.

[ChristianHJW]

There has been some thinking of making a real time encoder into 5.1 AC3 for other 5.1 sources, to be able to use most existing AC3 receivers, but nobody made it ....

[Awatef]

@ oddball
You don't need 6 cables, you need only 3.
And if your soundcard doesn't have analogic outputs, then it's crap!