Dolby Digital for games

[slackey]

I just ordered some Sony wireless 5.1 headphones (MDR-DS3000 (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=MDRDS3000&Dept=audio&CategoryName=pa_Headphones_VirtualDolbyDigital)) and I know they will work with my pc for dvd's because dvd's come pre-encoded in Dolby Digital. However, i also know that they won't work in games because games don't encode their surround signal into digital surround (aka dolby digital) They only use analog sound like EAX. nVidia used to have their SoundStorm technology, which had an onboard Dolby encoder so that everything could be dolby digital. As far as I know, however, this was only used on motherboards and I don't want to buy a whole new motherboard for my pc.

So my question is: are there any sound cards I could buy that have the Dolby encoder on them so everything can be in Dolby Digital 5.1?

[wogg]

Nope... realtime DD encoding died with nForce 2.

It's sad really, and the main reason my game / movie PC hasn't had a platform upgrade.

[itsplayed]

Turtle Beach Montego DDL
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards/mtgoddl/howdoesitwork.asp

[Bops2000]

Woggers ! good to see you around !

[slackey]

I've been researching more, and it turns out there are 4 sound cards that have this Dolby Digital Live capability

2 from AuzenTech (http://www.auzentech.com/)
A Diamond card (http://www.diamondmm.com/XS71DDL.php)
and the one that itsplayed mentioned, the Turtle Beach one

Just thought you might want to know what I found. I'm ordering the Diamond card because it is the cheapest one of those 4, but it still seems to be pretty similar.

[wogg]

Sure, make a liar out of me...

Admittedly it's been a year or so since I've investigated. My nForce board's been doing the job flawlessly for a while now but the poor little 266MHz FSB is really killing me for the games I like to waste entirely too much time on/in.

Good to know I've got options to keep my handy dandy optical link to the receiver.


...And hey Boppers!!
Clearly Mr. itsplayed has been picking up the resident PC expert title around here lately and I've cut back my message boarding in a futile effort to be productive at work. I've been lurking though... waiting for a good electronics question to pop up so I can feel good about knowing stuff :)

Cheers y'all!