PC Peripherals Creative introduces external, on the fly DDL Encoder

C

Chaos

Juggernaut
Creative just intro'd a new external dolby digital live encoder. Called DTS-610, this takes 6channel input from any pc soundcard and converts it to AC3 in real time. Stupid if u ask me cos AC3 is lossy and it involves Digital->Analog->Digital->Analog conversion which would definitely lead to loss in fidelity. Still its better than nothing for audigy 2 zs users. However most ppl are still better off with a real DDL Live card like the HDA X-Mystique.
http://soundblaster.com/products/hometheaterconnect/
 
Real stupid product. Why cant they put the encoder on a soundcard?
NEways not interested in DD encoder, as i dont plan to buy a AV reciever. Pure HTPC for me...
 
But the Audigy 2 ZS already has onboard Digital decoding....

And you can make ouyt the difference when you play an original DVD with the decoding enabled and disabled...

Look below at Chaos' post --- So, you mean to say that this converts stuff which is not originally in DDL format to DDL format??
 
Nikhil said:
But the Audigy 2 ZS already has onboard Digital decoding....

And you can make ouyt the difference when you play an original DVD with the decoding enabled and disabled...
Click to expand...
This is an encoder not a decoder... for encoding to AC3 on the fly so an HT receiver with SPDIF in may be used for audio playback.

Edit: @Nikhil... it converts a regular analog 5.1 signal to digital AC3.
 
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Chaos said:
This is an encoder not a decoder... for encoding to AC3 on the fly so an HT receiver with SPDIF in may be used for audio playback.

Edit: @Nikhil... it converts a regular analog 5.1 signal to digital AC3.
Click to expand...

Which is better?? Is the digital AC3 better than analog 5.1??

Coz I listened to an album in 5.1 AC3. And it was sad. It was a bit too much of 5.1. I mean the singer's voice was coming only from the centre and somehow it was not gelling well with the other channels.

But I listened to the DVD-Audio supplied with my 2ZS and it sounds AWESOME...
 
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Nikhil said:
Which is better?? Is the digital AC3 better than analog 5.1??

Coz I listened to an album in 5.1 AC3. And it was sad. It was a bit too much of 5.1. I mean the singer's voice was coming only from the centre and somehow it was not gelling well with the other channels.

But I listened to the DVD-Audio supplied with my 2ZS and it sounds AWESOME...
Click to expand...
Well AC3 is lossy... plain analog 5.1 aint. However the lossiness is imperceptible to most mortals :). The only use of this thing is if u wanna play games and u want to connect ur pc to ur HT to do so. Most HT receivers only have a digital in (coax or optical) and no analog in. So If you have 1000$ paradigm studio montors or the likes, then this is what u want. hell i'd rather dump the audigy2 zs and get the x-mystique as i said earlier since it does AC3 encoding natively. If you have normal analog PC speakers(i.e. other than Z-680/Z-5500), its of no use!
 
Ya, this will only be useful if your receiver doesnt have a spare 6ch input. But even the cheapest AV receivers have at least one 6ch input. Only the receivers in HTBs dont have any
 
Yup... thats true as well. Normally the only use of DDL is to use the receiver's dac instead of the cheapo dac on the sound card. However in this case, that wont help either cos the signal would have had been converted from digital to analog and back twice :P. Utterly useless product IMO.
 
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