good soundcard for AC3 output ...

[nirv117]

I have an ati 8500 aiw graphics card that I use for my video, and it works fine ...

I am looking to buy an audio card for my computer so I can use an optical output for AC3 sound to my stereo. Is there one that people would recomend, and would work well.

All of my AC3 will be from in Divx movies.

My ASUS motherboard is supposed to have support for optical output, but I can't even get the on-board sound to work at all. it plays every thing at like 1/2 speed, with a ton of scratchyness (on pc speakers)

[Prospero424]

Well, I would try getting your onboard sound working properly first. Try updating the drivers from Asus's site or the chipset manufacturers site. If this doesn't solve the problem, try disabling your onboard sound in the BIOS, then rebooting into your OS, then reenabling the sound in the BIOS again and reinstall the drivers if necessary.

If there is no way you can get your onboard sound working, then you might look into getting a new sound card. First off, does your receiver ONLY have an optical AC3 input? Most of them have the phono-looking SPDIF input as well, and a card supporting this is going to be a lot easier to find than the optical format. I would suggest either Turtle Beach's new card, an SB Audigy (even though the drivers are kind of frustrating) or any other major-name chipset based card.

Hope this helps
Prospero

[nirv117]

I have tried several things with the on-board sound with no luck so far. including all you mentioned.

I have an older turtle beach montego II card - I noticed it has a plug in for a add on sdpif card - I'm going to try the card I have with that, and Hope it works.

The reason I want Optical is because I already have a nice 100 dollar long optical cale. I do have several coaxial inputs as well.

Thanks for your help....

[nirv117]

an update in case someone reads this.

I got my onboard sound to work fine when I quit overclocking my cpu.



Now the spdif add on card for the motherboard works.

I just need to figure out how to tell it not to decode my ac3 - just send it along to the receiver.

[zod5000]

don't suppose you know where i can purchase one of the gigabyte addon's. My motherboard manual says its supported (refers to it as an audio combo kit). Would love to get one.

I too want to use an optical output as my dvd player already uses the coaxial input on my reciever