sovietdoc

Personally I think it might be cool. After all it's their answer to HDA's Dolby Digital Live card. Oh, for those who dunno what that is, its Creative's DTS Live encoder. With it you can send your DVD-A data or purchaised mp3's to the digital out on the encoder, and then decode it in DTS. However for 24-bit DVD-A's it seems of a waste since regular DTS isnt 96/24 therefore you will lose quality. People say it will come out in september...I wanna see some reviews of it compared to the HDA's DD Live. Good thing this is an external device, so it won't use any of your CPU.

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dj_stick

that's not always true

so it's external? yep

external devices can still be software driven, and internal devices can sometimes have a lower CPU usage than external counterparts

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sovietdoc

I didn't say it was always true :P But in case of this HDA Mystique card, some people reported heavy CPU load when using DD Live.

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dj_stick

that sounds like the Dolby Digital processing is software, rather than hardware accelerated

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sovietdoc

Could be....I don't really know =/

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Lowfat

That thing is the biggest waste of money IMO. seriously the stupidest idea i have ever seen. The way it is connected it through your existing soundcard. So the sound goes from digital (raw)-> to analog (outputs on soundcard) -> then back to digital ( DTS-610) - > back to analog (output on receiver). Now tell me what is the point? IT totally defeats the point of using digital outputs.

There website states "Turn any PC game into an interactive DTS gaming experience. Get blown away by the awesome DTS surround sound when you connect your PC multi-channel audio to the DTS-610."

How is someone suppose to be 'blown away by the awesome DTS surround sound' when all it is doing is converting analog sound back to digital...

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DavoNogo

You could say the same about Dolby Digital Live, as that does the exact same thing, only DTS allows for much higher compression rates than Dolby Digital, and doing it this way (instead of using the HDA card) you can still get EAX4+ effects

Lowfat

No it doesn't. With DDL they sound is outputed through analog outputs then converted back to digital, then back to analog like this POS. With DDL souncards, the sound is carried through digital SPDIF output (coaxial, optical) to the receiver, where the sound is decoded by the reciever) then outputed analogaly (sp?) to the speakers.

It is a total waste of money to buy one of these, your not going to make it sound any different at all. I really don't see how they can sell these things, they are relying on people's ignorance to sell them.

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sovietdoc

We will just have to read the reviews when its out, gentleman

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DavoNogo

With the DTS-610, you output 6 analog channels from the soundcard to the DTS-610 which then gets processed from analog to DTS, then from the DTS-610, you have the option of either optical or coaxial to your receiver. That's exactly how DDL works, only the analog to digital connection is done internally meaning you don't need the extra cable that Creative supplies with the DTS-610. They're both outputted digitally to the speakers. The main purpose is to minimise on the cabling, as that's one of the largest selling points, especially with the DDL soundcards/mobo's, as it's usually just a single coaxial or optical cable. With the DTS-610, they supply a multi-channel cable, which is really just 3 stereo jacks stuck together, but from the DTS-610 to the receiver, it's still just the one cable, either coaxial or optical.

Lowfat

In DDL The soundcard isn't doing any of the decoding, the decoding is done by the reciever which usually has better DAC's unless your using high qaulity soundcard. With the DTS-610, the souncards DACs are been used, and if its some crappy Realtek ALC850 or something, where the DACs aren't that great, your sound isn't going to get any better after its gone to the DTS-610.

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DavoNogo

well if you said THAT before, I would have understood where you were getting at...

You can use the DTS-610 with ANY soundcard... that means any soundcard with good DACs... and remember, the whole point to this product is to minimise cabling to the receiver. But once technical, unbiased reviews start popping up, we'll know for sure just what this product does to the signal

Falstaff

It was my first choice but I opted for just playback quality for my laptop....
http://www.soundblaster.com/products...&product=10769

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xzero1

I have crap pc speakers. I have descent stereo/surround speakers. I have a cheapo 5.1 amp with no 5.1 encoder. Either solution would work. What I don't like about creative is miniplug analog connections are flaky especially with changes in temperature/humidity. One still will have extra cables connected from the computer to the DTS-610 and then to the stereo and then the power connection.

I seriously doubt (even though a reviewer stated) that the HDA soundcard does
digital -> analog -> digital for its 5.1 encoding! These same reviewers missed the fact that HDA 5.1 encoding IS done in software! I have the HDA card. It is amazing what good speakers can do for sound. Surround encoding works well for games but you will lose fps. Now what is creative thinking? Their new xfi could easily do HARDWARE ac3 encoding. with minimal fps loss. Hello? Creative are you there? BTW, a single optical cable to the card is very nice.