Doom 3 and X-fi Platinum surround sound help?

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everythingtonothing.com - 07 Jul 2006 01:42 GMT

Hello everyone. I recently just purchased an x-fi platinum sound card.
I also have doom 3. I am having trouble setting up 5.1 surround sound
and all my looking on the net has left me clueless. This is my setup:

Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum connected from "break out" box using a
digital optical out to my home receiver. I do not get surround sound
and when I open Doom there is not option to turn it on or anything. I
have my control panel set to 5.1 surround sound speakers and I know
this receiver accepts dolby and all the other surround sound formats
because my DVD player works perfectly with it. Should I have the Sound
Blaster software set to use an external decoder or the built in one?
Anything else I am missing?
Thanks,
Mike

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Shinnokxz - 07 Jul 2006 18:59 GMT

> Hello everyone. I recently just purchased an x-fi platinum sound card.
> I also have doom 3. I am having trouble setting up 5.1 surround sound
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> Thanks,
> Mike

As far as I know there was a seperate patch to get superior surround
sound for Doom 3 off of Creative's site. When I got my Audigy2 it was in
beta, but I believe it may have gotten released with new Doom 3 patches
or newer soundcard patches.

http://www.soundblaster.com/Gaming/doom3/?downloadtypedesc=12

According to that it's for the Audigy series but it's worth a shot. I
would try updating Doom 3 to its most recent version and also your
X-Fi's drivers from the Creative website to their most recent version-
then give that patch a shot.

It says it's in beta but it works great for me and my 7.1 surround on my
Audigy2. Really adds another dynamic to the game.

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John Moore - 08 Jul 2006 20:35 GMT

> Hello everyone. I recently just purchased an x-fi platinum sound card.
> I also have doom 3. I am having trouble setting up 5.1 surround sound
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> Thanks,
> Mike

By the sound of your description you are wanting your soundblaster to
output surround sound to your reciver via one single digital audio
connection.

To do this your soundcard would have to encode your audio into Dolby
Digital or DTS.

AFAIK non of the Soundblasters can do this out of the box and only the
Audigy series can do it via a 3rd party app (and with a bit of lag too).

All I can say is connect your soundblaster to your reciver using the
analouge outputs (if your reciver has multichannel analouge inputs) or
ditch your soundblaster and buy a HDA X-plosion, which CAN do Dolby
Digital and DTS encoding. I have one and the sound in Doom3 and all of
my other games with surround sound is stunning on my 4.0 speaker setup
on my reciver. (centres and subs are for wusses!)

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everythingtonothing.com - 09 Jul 2006 23:05 GMT

well that seems somewhat lame. i thought you can choose to have the
audio decoded by the built in decoder or through and external source.
basically the only wqay to get surround sound out of this thing is too
hook up the analogue cables? when i play dvds using powerdvd and have
it set to decode on an external source(my receiver) it works fine but
the games don't.

mike

> > Hello everyone. I recently just purchased an x-fi platinum sound card.
> > I also have doom 3. I am having trouble setting up 5.1 surround sound
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]
> Please change 'no.spam' to 'jcomcp.plus' to reply.
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John Moore - 11 Jul 2006 22:23 GMT

(Top posting corrected, shame google gropes dosen't do this
automagically)

>>> Hello everyone. I recently just purchased an x-fi platinum sound card.
>>> I also have doom 3. I am having trouble setting up 5.1 surround sound
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
>> my other games with surround sound is stunning on my 4.0 speaker setup
>> on my reciver. (centres and subs are for wusses!)

> well that seems somewhat lame. i thought you can choose to have the
> audio decoded by the built in decoder or through and external source.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> mike

The audio on DVDs is allready encoded in DD or Dts. All PoweerDVD is
doing is streaming the audio data directly from the DVD to the digital
out on your soundcard without touching the data. The audio in nearly
all games isn't encoded so the internal/external decode option won't
make any difference as theres nothing to decode.

To sum things up:

1. Your reciver needs Dolby Digital, Dts or multichannel analogue to
output sourround sound (not counting Dolby Pro Logic or DTS Neo:6, but
thats a different kettle of fish...).
2. Surround sound != Dolby Digital or Dts.
3. Nearly all games output surround audio as multichannel audio (via
DS3D or OpenAL) to the soundcard which then outputs it as best it can.
Either as stereo or as multichannel analogue.
4. AFAIK, only soundcards with 'Dolby Digital Live' or 'Dts Connect' can
encode that multichannel audio into Dolby Digital or Dts in hardware.
5. Currently non of the soundblasters have 'Dolby Digital Live' or 'Dts
Connect'.

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