I haven't kept up on sound cards in awhile, and I was wondering if there's any standalone sound card out there which does Dolby Digital Surround encoding? Last I checked, the only thing that could properly output Dolby Digital Surround to a 5.1 reciever such as mine over SPDIF/digital-coax was the SoundStorm on nForce2 motherboards. The onboard sound on my Asus P4P800 Deluxe is working great, except it only does Dolby Digital Surround to SPDIF as passthrough when playing a DVD or something else with AC3/DTS 5.1 audio. What I really want is true 5.1 Digital even in games that support Dolby Surround (requiring the sound card to encode to Dolby Digital on-the-fly).

I found some interesting cards on a dutch forum:

TerraTec Aureon 7.1 PCI with DD live

Turtle Beach Monego

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/HiTeC.html

DTS, C-Media and Realtek

ASUS P5AD2 PREMIUM RETAIL motherboard

Why do you want Doby Digital over S/PDIF connection to your receiver? There is no gain in sound quality compared to proper analog connection (of course if your receiver has multichannel analog line-in).

Dolby Digital is a lossy compression algorithm which loses sound quality by design, so if one tries to maintain as much quality as possible in consumer world he should look for soundcard with high quality multichannel DAC, e.g. Audiotrak (a division of ESI) Prodigy 7.1, and then hook it to receiver/amplifier with decent shielded connective cords.

The main reason I want this is so that I can get proper multichannel sound in games over SPDIF. I don't want to have to individually connect all my speakers or use Stereo->multichannel using ProLogic II, etc. It's incredibly annoying to have a great receiver and 5 speakers and not hear sounds that are supposed to be behind me out of the rear speakers. Granted, I'm not well-versed in the latest terminology and I'm not entirely sure what a multichannel DAC is, but if it lets me hook up over SPDIF, retain my Dolby Digital Surround passthrough for DVD's, and also play games properly with multichannel sound (hearing things positionally from the right speakers) then I'll look into finding a card with that.

Does your receiver have three stereo line inputs (line-in)?

Yes, it has line inputs for Front, Surround, Center, and Sub. However, wouldn't using those inputs instead of SPDIF not work for Dolby Digital Surround passthrough when I am playing a DVD on my computer?

Thanks for the info, Mark7. It appears that I am looking for a sound card that has "Dolby Digital Live" technology.

There is no reason to prefer `DolbyDigital passthrough' to `5.1 analog' output. When you choose analog output the DD stream decoding is done by DVD player (in software), and software decoding is supposed to have more options (like the ablility to use dynamics compressor - in `Noisy environment') and the same, if not better, quality.

I would recommend you to look for multichannel soundcard with higher grade Digital-to-Analog Converter(s) (DAC - this electronic component is resposible for resulting audio quality). Accurate analog connection will surely beat DD-encoded stream in terms of fidelity (exactness) of sound reproduction.

Can your superDAC soundcards measure speaker distance and roomsize trough special microphone and adjust delays etc. accordingly to match your listening position and speaker setup? (And please don't tell me you play games in a round soundproof room strapped mid-air to maximize your listening pleasure)

Many modern midpriced (300$-500$) home cinema amplifiers can adjust the soundfield, when using digital sources. So wether I'm watching dvds or playing games, I'd like the idea, that the full potential of my system is put to use.

I admit that sound quality suffers from dd-encoding, but it suffers from direct analog inputs too - because then the signal is probably not optimised for your enviroment.

And if you watch dvd's and other dd/dts video from computer, the signal is passed straight through the spdif, so no loss there.

btw. Do many aplifiers feature multiple multichannel analog inputs? Mine is already in use because of my dvd-players SACD-output

My motto:
"Analog for stereo, digital for surround"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16829127001

I use the SPDIF output on my on-board AC97 codec to transmit the DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 streams directly to my AV receiver (Pioneer with DTS and DD decoders).
The main thing is:
The streams must be properly encoded DD and DTS tracks!
So, you can use your onboard codec and spdif connector, but MUST to turn off any postprocessing encoding of stream, like up/downsampling, equalizer, etc...