Nforce Dolby Digital Question

[Drylock]

I currently have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soundcard hooked to my Sony Dolby Digital receiver using the digital output. It plays DVDs as true Dolby Digital, however Mp3s and stuff are two channel through that output. No soundcard out now can encode to Dolby Digital and send it out the SPDIF cable. My question is will the Nforce really do this? I want to play an MP3 and have the Blue DOlby Digital light on the receiver come on. I realize it won't be true DD but it should be better then what I have now. Any answers would be helpful.

 

[Accord99]

Why would you want Dolby encoded mp3? The NForce's DD encoding is meant for games supporting DirectSound3D and even there, the main benefit is that you only need 1 cable to support 3d sound instead of the usual 3 cables for analog 3D sound, but at the expense of sound quality since the bandwidth of DD is much lower than analog. Encoding mp3s into DD will only result in reduced sound quality because it compresses something that has already been compressed significantly.

 

[ghetto buck]

To answer your question, yes.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Accord99 - There is no such thing as analogue bandwith. Bandwith measures the flow of data and data is discrete. Analogue is a continuous stream, so talking about bandwith is meaningless. I agree that compressing the sound will result in a loss of quality compared to a decent analogue Hi-Fi, but in the world of PC audio the analogue components are not high quality.

I don't believe you'll experience a loss in quality using DD instead of an analogue connector. The N-Force will do exactly what you want, if only filling two of the possible 5.1 channels.

 

[digason]

Since I picked up a copy of WinDVD4, I play all my MP3s with that. I use the channel expansion capabillities built into WinDVD to create a 6 channel mix of the 2 channel MP3s. The nForce APU then encodes it into an AC3 stream. It actually works really well. Sounds several times better than putting my HT receiver in Pro Logic mode for the same 2-channel content.