NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Forums › Dell Home (Inspiron, XPS, Studio) › USB sound card with Dolby Digital Live finally found!
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

USB sound card with Dolby Digital Live finally found!

post #1 of 39
9/17/06 at 12:58pm
Thread Starter 
I have bought this wonderful little thing:

http://www.sondigo.com/callisto



It supports Dolby digital live, thus enabling digital 5.1 sound in games. I've been looking for a product that does this for ages...

Note that the implementation is in software, taking approx 7% CPU of a P4. More specs on the chip:

http://www.infortech.com.tw/C-MEDIA/...t/Nitrogen.pdf
C-Media is apparantly developing a new driver for the Nitrogen D2 chip in the callisto that also does Dolby Headphone! NOT yet available, though.

http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/c-med...n_dsp_software

Features of this sound card:

Dolby Digital Live is a real-time encoding technology that converts any audio signal into a Dolby Digital bitstream for transport and playback through a home theatre system. With it your PC can be hooked up to your DolbyTM Digital-equipped audio/video receiver through a single digital connection, ensuring the integrity of the audio signal.

DTS Connect turns your PC into an action-packed entertainment experience that surrounds you in high-quality audio. Your movies, music and games come alive in exciting, dynamic multi-channel DTSTM Digital Surround, the same sound format found in movie theatres.

DTS Neo:PC takes any two-channel audio source and expands it into 5.1 channel surround sound, making it an ideal way to take your stereo music and output it over DTS Connect. Neo:PC also provides optimized modes for stereo music and motion picture soundtracks.

Supports EAX 2.0

Headphone output

3.5mm digital optical S/PDIF output.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 39
9/17/06 at 1:00pm
I can't imagine that a card that small actually has a decent feature set, and even if it did, a DD signal over USB? I don't think USB can move data fast enough to support that.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 39
9/17/06 at 1:29pm
Thread Starter 
SPDIF carries about 1.5Mb/s. USB2 is 480 Mb/s. What's the problem?

And the card does not need much of a feature set, as it does not need to do high-quality analog output. The DDL functionality is implemented in software in any case.

The big question for me is: Does it do upsampling from 2ch->5.1ch sound, or does it expose an actual 5.1 sound card to applications...?
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 39
9/17/06 at 1:33pm
Thread Starter 
Sorry, DD is max 640 kbit/s. I think DTS is a bit more.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 39
9/17/06 at 2:26pm
I think that card is basically just the eqiv of the spdif out that comes as standard laptop. i.e no actual encoding hardware + at any rate most games don't support DD they use EAX for surround.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 39
9/17/06 at 4:33pm
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 39
9/19/06 at 6:26am
Thread Starter 
I asked Sondigo, and this was their reply:
Quote:
Hi Mikael, The Nitrogen D2 is a two channel chip, but using the included driver software, it can process and send 5.1 discrete channels digitally though Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect. As long as the content source is discrete 5.1, the Callisto's digital output will also be "pure" 5.1. If you need 7.1 however, it's only achievable with a software upmix (like Neo:PC, which is also included in the Callisto driver). We don't have anything upcoming with the CM106, but it's something we might look at down the road. Let us know if you have any further questions. Thanks for your inquiry, Aaron
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 39
9/19/06 at 6:59am
Thread Starter 
Found this about the Nitrogen D2 chip:

http://www.infortech.com.tw/C-MEDIA/...t/Nitrogen.pdf

EAX 2.0 and full discrete 5.1 support. I will buy this.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 39
9/19/06 at 3:50pm
Thread Starter 
I have now ordered a callisto - will report back with findings.
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 39
9/19/06 at 5:57pm
Yea, let us know how it works as waiting for a express sound card will probably take longer than this laptop will last (lol)

D.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 39
9/19/06 at 6:07pm
Thread Starter 
And I don't need analog 7.1 - only digital. So an expresscard Audigy or Xifi is way overkill. Though EAX 5.0 + DDL would be nice...
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 39
9/19/06 at 7:00pm

Express slot to PCMCIA

I just got a e-mail yesterday. I contacted a company quite a while back who custom make adaptorsand was told that posiable in august a express slot to PCMCIA adaptor would be ready for beta testing. I was also told that they needed beta testers for this adaptor. The good news for many is the e-mail they sent me yesterday informed me that I will be contacted in a couple more weeks as it will be ready and I will get to be a beta tester. So as soon as I receive the adaptor I will post the info on how to get one or who to contact to be a beta tester. This small adaptor will allow any PCMCIA card to work in the express Slot. So those in the same situation as me as I upgraded from my XPS Gen 2 to the M 1710 and lost the ability to use the Audigy PCMCIA sound card. So I will post as soon as I get the adaptor or here from them.
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 39
9/19/06 at 7:51pm
Hey jeffcmfrt... be sure to PM me as soon as you can (please) as I would love to test one of these out.

D.
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 39
9/19/06 at 10:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by m94mni
And I don't need analog 7.1 - only digital. So an expresscard Audigy or Xifi is way overkill. Though EAX 5.0 + DDL would be nice...
Thanks for the updates m94mni. I'll be watching this thread. Was wondering if everything (5.1 discrete to dolby 5.1 conversion) is done within the driver and not in the dongle, how hard is it to write a custom driver for the built-in sound card to output the DDL through the S/PDIF of the TJ965 cable ? What I don't understand is, why the hell Creative doesn't do it ? It's not a licensing issue as many Creative products already do it (within hardware). I paid $25 for the crappy Creatibe Audigy software which I uninstalled almost immediately, but that was my stupidity to buy it. But I'll be happy to pay another $25 for a new Creative driver that makes the built-in soundcard DDL enabled and I am sure many people will. May be I should just wait for some future versions of ac3filter.
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 39
9/20/06 at 3:33pm
Thread Starter 
I've read somewhere that Creative seems to have a bad relationhip with Dolby in general...

Note that their DTS-610 external appliance supports DTS Connect but not DDL.

Yes, DDL is done in software in this case (too much for a cheap card). Takes about 7% of a P4 CPU, it is said.

I've been thinking of the possibility of redirecting the output to the Dell SPDIF dongle as well, but I don't think it's that simple without source code....

Note that the DDL implementation in the C-Media Xear driver is not an open implementation - so someone needs to reimplement it
completely. Hopefully it can be done, as the format is at least relatively well understood. Dolby Headphone , which I also want, is more complicated as the algorithm itself is a secret.
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 39
9/20/06 at 4:45pm
Let me know what kind of cpu utilization you see with this....
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 39
9/20/06 at 5:06pm
Thread Starter 
I'm not expecting a real framerate decrease given a dual core CPU... I don't think many games can saturate two cores... and they're not CPU-bound to begin with. But I will try to report.
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 39
9/22/06 at 8:17pm
Thread Starter 
Reviews apparently upcoming from Extremetech, PC world, and others.
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 39
9/22/06 at 8:26pm
Thread Starter 
And US stores will carry this soon.

They have a great guy on their live chat - if you have any questions, try asking him.
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 39
9/23/06 at 7:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by m94mni
And US stores will carry this soon.

They have a great guy on their live chat - if you have any questions, try asking him.

That's good news Keep us updated !
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Forums › Dell Home (Inspiron, XPS, Studio) › USB sound card with Dolby Digital Live finally found!