Audigy 4 and Reciever/Amp simple question

Question

Hi all,
Despite inundating myself with what is probably TOO much information from the knowledge base and forum, I could really do with an answer to what is essentially a pretty simple question....
I recently got an Audigy 4 sound card and external io hub. Lovely bit of kit. Very nice. I only really use it to watch the odd dvd and listen to music with WMP9.
I have a Sony multi-channel receiver/amp with 5. speakers attached.
The amp has multiple digital connections - all either optical or co-axial. (and individual 5. analogue too)
These currently accept optical links from my dvd player and xbox. Lovely.
So, I would prefer to use the digital connections (nice and easy cable approach as with xbox) but I think I'll only get 2 channels when I play dvd... So what is the best way to connect the two....
Thanks
Glen

Answer 1

The thing about that kind of digital connection is that involves compressing 5. channels into the space of 2, using proprietary encodings. This makes sense in terms of storage space savings (i.e. more room on that DVD for special features), or if bandwidth is constrained (i.e. broadcast TV can fit 5. into the space originally designed for stereo), but the only way it makes any kind of sense for getting audio a few feet from the soundcard to a receiver or speaker system is because nothing more direct ends up being available. The result is that your xbox needs a high-powered chip to make something very (and unnecessarily) complex seem simple. Your Audigy does not have that; it does not have the ability to make that kind of 5. audio for your receiver to then decode.
Your Audigy does, in fact, have the ability to output 5. digitally, in the digital space that 6 full-range channels need, using a single cable; but your receiver, like virtually all of such, doesn't accept it. CL digital speaker systems have a "Digital DIN" input which uses it, but your receiver does not have a "Digital DIN" input, nor any equivalent of that. Even if it did, there's still a problem, because it's muted for DVD-Audio's higher-resolution formats, purely as an effort to prevent consumers access to high-resolution digital audio signals that are not encoded, for copy-protection reasons.
Because DVD 5. soundtracks are pre-encoded on the DVD, you don't need the Audigy to be able to encode. All that is needed is to get the soundtrack from the DVD to your receiver as is. The Audigy can do that. As the other post indicates, the keys are to tell the DVD player software to output digital, and to tell the Audigy not to decode.
Under the covers, that actually uses the Audigy as a 2-channel soundcard, and the rest of its channels are "wasted." None of its real multichannel capabilities can actually be used with a "digital" connection like that. However, if all you do is watch DVD's and listen to stereo audio files, especially if your receiver has features to simulate full surround from stereo, you may not care.
Personally, my strong preference is for the multichannel analog hookup, although I might set up both types so I could compare the sound of the receiver's decoding with the Audigy's decoding.
Things you can't do when using an external decoder hookup:
. Use the soundcard to adjust volume while listening to DD/DTS multichannel soundtracks (though it's best to use the receiver to adjust volume all the time, actually).
2. Hear any other sound sources while listening to DD/DTS multichannel soundtracks.
3. Get multichannel audio from PC games.
4. Get multichannel upmixing using CL's CMSS feature.
-Dave
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