Yes, I've jumped on the ATI Radeon / win 7 hdmi audio passthru
bandwagon. I chose ATI because their support is excellent. And the
sound is great with my latest Pioneer receiver.
Do I miss my soundblaster? Sometimes. I don't miss their support.
Their software releases are buggy. And their drivers are resource
hogs.
But the chipset sounds great. An X-FI handles 2 channel and 5.1 lossy
surround better in some ways than these newer cards do.
An X-FI can effectively up-mix a 2-channel source in real-time. Those
10,000 MIPs are great.
Even without their DVD Audio player, Foobar 2000 will work hand-in-
hand with the creative control panel. I liked setting the win 7 audio
out to 24-192. And then set the Creative Control Panel to Audio
Creation Mode. In that GUI, set all levels flat. Choose 24-96 output.
And be sure to check the "bit-matched" setting. This may not suite our
audiophile friends, but it's sweet. I spent two years listening to all
the possibles on that card before moving on. Great experiences. Don't
regret it at all.
Another great feature.... the EAX stuff... Current soundcards don't
come close. They say it's for gaming. I found it works for surround
too. Just set the EAX effects to around -15 db to -10 db.... Check out
some of its effects with Aaron Neville DVDA's - in Foobar. Pretty
impressive stuff.
Finally, the Auzentech folks bought rights to the X-FI chip and merged
it with a new HDMI (bluray audio passthru friendly) card. It's pricey
compared to ATI, but you get the X-FI processor combined with
passthru... Not sure how it works, but if they've included it in this
setup. If the card wasn't so hard to get (they can't make 'em fast
enough to fill the demand), I'd buy one just to see what it does.
You may want to consider that.
One last note to the audiophile crowd. I know you'd never consider
listening to an MP3. But I'd love to be randomly slipping in an MP3
during a sound demo to you all with my X-FI card processing in the
background. Just to see if you really could hear the difference.
On Jul 5, 6:27 pm, yorama <webmas...@liatart.com> wrote:
> For surround, quad and 24/96 vinyl rips I use PowerDVD 10 with a
> Yamaha RX-V465 HDMI receiver. The important part is using the ATI
> Radeon HD-5670 HDMI card that is certified by PowerDVD (Cyberlink)
> between them, this way the player bypasses the Windows audio engine
> and it can stream up to 8x24/96 channels directly to the speakers
> smoothly and uninterrupted (set receiver to "direct" mode).
>
> From my experience PowerDVD will protect most commercial uncompressed
> content and downsample the audio before streaming as it is declared.
> However PowerDVD will gladly play multi track Wavs so all my DVD-As
> are converted accordingly. For DTS PowerDVD will play any title that
> has been converted to a Nero disk image audio CD (.nrg) without down
> sampling, so all my DTS/SACD2DTS titles are converted accordingly as
> well. It is a bit of a hassle to prepare the content but well worth
> it, hands down it is the best sound I can get from my system (foobar,
> media player/classic.......).
>
> When the choice is possible, I do not hear any difference if PowerDVD
> is decompressing DTS and sending PCM or if it is outputting DTS and
> the receiver is decompressing (pass through).
>
> Lately I have also been enjoying the same sound and performance from
> my new Xtreamer Pro into the same Yamaha receiver, in this case all
> the content needs to be in multichannel flac form (still sorting out
> some problems with quad flacs not playing from the rear channels,
> hopefully I will nail it soon).
>
> Can't help much with the video audio formats because I only use
> Xtreamer/Pro for watching movies.
>
> On Jul 6, 1:22 am, "Lokkerman" <phil.steep...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > But this is were we get the differences between us folk that like analogue
> > outs and those the like digital receivers.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: surroundsound@googlegroups.com [mailto:surroundsound@googlegroups.com]
>
> > On Behalf Of realafrica
> > Sent: 05 July 2010 23:04
> > To: SurroundSound
> > Subject: [SurroundSound] Re: Power DVD 10 Ultra 3D
>
> > Tab says, "If your going for the next step...."
> > IMHO you might do well to get a better sound card: Creative is better than
> > it used to be, X-Fi is a top of the range gaming card, but it's not serious
> > for music.
> > Not as good as M-Audio, RME, E-Mu and similar.
>
> > On 5 July, 18:41, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I had a similar set up ... only with a Yamaha receiver. I think you
> > > are indeed hearing 24/96 (not downsampled). If you're looking for the
> > > next step, you can consider adding a processor that decodes DTS HD or
> > > True HD, such as a NAD M15. You can then set P DVD 10 to "passthru"
> > > the audio. The difference between analog out at 24/26 and "passthru"
> > > is noticeably better. However, you can buy an entire new receiver with
> > > these capabilities from Onkyo or Pioneer for a fraction of the price.
>
> > > My opinion on this: the P DVD 10, Arcsoft TMT3, or Corel Win DVD all
> > > do their own sound subsystems. They filter the audio before the X-FI
> > > gets to do its thing. The best my X-FI ever sounded was when using
> > > Creative's DVD Audio player in Windows XP (and later Vista).
> > > Unfortunately, they don't make a version for Windows 7. In some ways,
> > > KMP player sounds better for most video playback on an X-FI. It's
> > > sound subsystem seems to let the X-FI do its thing better.
>
> > > Hope this helps.
>
> > > On Jul 5, 10:14 am, realafrica <paul.gam...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > 1) As you play this test material in PDVD 10 check if your
> > > > soundcard can report/show the resolution going thru it?
> > > > 2) Output it to a DAC that shows the resolution.
>
> > > > On 4 July, 19:36, polmuaddib <vladimirmalu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > Hello, everybody, I may be boring with the same subjects from time
> > > > > to time, but I need some clarifying...
> > > > > I installed the new PDVD 10 Ultra3D and I downloaded some Japanese
> > > > > HD Reference disc. It contains a lot of video referencing material
> > > > > and 3 audio tracks in LPCM 24/96 7.1, DolbyTrueHD 24/96 7.1 and
> > > > > DTS HD Master 24/96 7.1 which PDVD plays. The interesting thing is
> > > > > that in the information OSD in PDVD says that the output is also
> > > > > 24/96 which was never the case in older versions. Any 24/96
> > > > > material was reported
> > > > > 16/48 in output. So, as everybody stated, PDVD was downsampling
> > > > > the material.
> > > > > My question is if the new version is also downsampling but falsely
> > > > > reporting and how can I check it?
> > > > > Also, can we make some NEWS section about software? Players,
> > > > > plugins....
> > > > > Thank you.
>
> > > > > p.s. I am running Win7 ultimate, with creative 24/96 5.1 X-Fi and
> > > > > analog outputs to AV reciever NAD T750.
>
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