sound card for htpc

bazery

Any suggestions for a good sound card that will do 7.1

Also how do they hook up to the amp. They look like they use headphone size Jack's.
My amp is old but does DTS and Dolby. No HDMI on the amp tho

Serephucus

Cheapest card that will handle DTS:
http://www.dabs.ie/products/asus-xonar-dsx-pci-express-7-1-channel-audio-card-81GK.html?q=xonar&src=16

Higher-end:
http://www.dabs.ie/products/asus-xonar-d2x-7-1-pci-e-ultimate-theatre---gaming-soundcard-118db-snr-provides-hi-fi-class-audio-4ZH5.html?q=xonar&src=16

There's also the Auzentech Forte to consider. Harder to find, but I use it, and it's really nice. I don't have any personal experience with Xonar cards as yet.

bazery

nice one, might look into the xonar card, its in my budget. that other one isn't even on amazon!
one other question are the cables to amp included with the box and are they like headphone to component.

Serephucus

Does your amp use RCA or something?

bazery

Serephucus wrote: »

Does your amp use RCA or something?

It has one optical and 5 different dual component for surround. It also has 6 channel input. I want to upgrade at some stage so 7.1is a must .
It's an old Yamaha

Serephucus

Well optical will carry 7.1 as well, and both cards have optical out, so you could just use that.

bazery

On this note, I have a asus hd 6670 which only displays stereo options in playback. but when i play a movie with 5.1 in xbmc the amp plays back 5.1 proper surround. I've updated every driver possible but can't get the configuration to display more than stereo. this is the reason I'm looking into sound cards. any ideas?

sink

bazery wrote: »

On this note, I have a asus hd 6670 which only displays stereo options in playback. but when i play a movie with 5.1 in xbmc the amp plays back 5.1 proper surround. I've updated every driver possible but can't get the configuration to display more than stereo. this is the reason I'm looking into sound cards. any ideas?

The card itself probably supports uncompressed stereo only, however it can pass trough Dolby Digital or DTS from a media file to an external decoder. Basically the card does no audio processing at all and just sends the audio bit-steam as is to the amp which does all the decoding/processing.

Serephucus

Exactly. It's like a few years ago when video cards would have a little 2-pin connection to pass audio through the HDMI ports. It's just that now it's done through the PCIe bus instead. I'm actually not sure of exactly what's supported, as I've never used HDMI to carry audio.

bazery

Serephucus wrote: »

Exactly. It's like a few years ago when video cards would have a little 2-pin connection to pass audio through the HDMI ports. It's just that now it's done through the PCIe bus instead. I'm actually not sure of exactly what's supported, as I've never used HDMI to carry audio.

Its sends Dolby digital but not DTS, if it's bit streaming won't the receiver decode the DTS or have I something wrong.

Serephucus

Yes... I thought we'd already established that it was playing back 5.1 correctly though. I must be missing something. What exactly is the problem?

bazery

Serephucus wrote: »

Yes... I thought we'd already established that it was playing back 5.1 correctly though. I must be missing something. What exactly is the problem?

It'll do 5.1 Dolby but not DTS, DTS us just quiet

bucks73

Sounds more like your amp cant decode DTS but your first post said it could. Would be very strange for an amp to be capable of decoding DD and not DTS. Whats the amp model number?

bazery

bucks73 wrote: »

Sounds more like your amp cant decode DTS but your first post said it could. Would be very strange for an amp to be capable of decoding DD and not DTS. Whats the amp model number?

It's a Yamaha htr 5540rds
She's old but it says DTS and Dolby d on the front. She's played DTS before so I don't think it's the amp