A solution to my audio problem.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Well, it\'s come to this, either spend another 200 bucks and update my reciever, or just buy a motherboard that can ENCODE pcm signals in realtime (in hardware) to AC3.



This is my solution.
The Gigabyte GA-7NNXP motherboard

With MCP-T technology. My digital 5.1 channel problems shall be solved. The Chipset allows AC3 encoding in realtime for a Dolby digital reciever to decode.. So my speaker pack will work great.



nForce2 Ultra400 chipset
 
Processor
Socket A for AMD AthlonXP / Athlon / Duron processor
 
Chipset
NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 System Platform Processor (SPP)
Media and Communications Processor - Turbo (MCP-T)
Super I/O: ITE IT8712F chip
Silicon Image sil3112A controller
GigaRAID ATA 133 RAID controller
Intel 82540EM Gigabit LAN chip
Realtek 8201 LAN PHY Chip
Realtek ALC650/655 Audio AC\'97 Codec
2 x 4M bit flash ROM

Front Side Bus
400/333/266 MHz FSB
 
Memory
Type:Dual Channel DDR400/ 333/ 266- 184pin
Max capacity: Up to 3GB by 4 DIMM slots

Internal I/O Connectors
2 x Serial ATA connector
4 x UDMA ATA 133/100/66 Bus Master IDE connectors
1 x FDD connector
1 x USB 2.0/1.1 connectors(support 2 ports)
2 x IEEE 1394 connectors ( supports 3 ports)
S/P DIF input/output pin header
3 x cooling fan pin headers
WOL pin header
CD/AUX in
1 x Game/Midi connector

Expansion Slots
1 x AGP Pro slot (8x/4x-AGP 3.0 compliant, supports 1.5v display card only.)
5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant)
1 x DPS slot

Rear Panel I/O
PS/2 Keyboard / Mouse
4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
2 x RJ45 ports
2 x COM ports
1 x LPT
Audio (1 x Line-in / 1 x Line-out / 1 x Mic) connector

CPU/AGP/DIMM setting
CPU FSB / Multiplier / Vcore Voltage adjustable via BIOS
AGP Voltage / Clock adjustable via BIOS
DIMM Voltage / Clock adjustable via BIOS

Power
ATX power connector and ATX 12V connector
Power-off by Windows 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP shut down and switch

Form Factor
ATX form factor
30.5 x 24.4 cm

H/W Monitoring
System health status auto-detect and report by BIOS
Hardware detecting and reporting for case open, power-in voltage, CPU voltage, and fan speed.

BIOS
2x4M bit flash ROM, enhanced ACPI feature for PC98/Win98/Win2000/Me/ CE/XP compliance, Green, PnP, DMI, INT13 (>8.4GB) and Anti-Virus functions
IDE#1~#4, SCSI, LS120, ZIP and CD-ROM bootable

Other Features
EasyTune™4 (support the function of hardware monitoring only)
Suspend to RAM (STR)
Supports USB KB / MS wake up from S3

Bundle Software
Norton Internet Security™
Norton Anti Virus™
Norton™ Personal Firewall
Norton™ Privacy Control
Norton™ Parental Control
Norton™ Spam Alert
GIGABYTE Windows Utility Manager
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Adobe Acrobat e-Book Reader

Driver
nForce2 series system driver
REALTEK audio driver
Intel Pro/1000 CT LAN driver
NVIDIA LAN driver
Silcon Image Serial ATA driver
GigaRAID IDE RAID driver
USB2.0 driver



It may be over kill, but atleast i\'ll get TRUE 5.1 sound finally. You\'d think having a SBLIVE5.1 card with a Inspire 5500 Digital system they\'d give you 5.1 sound in games.. Then you find out the reciever only works with AC3 channels.......  stoooopid creative..

hehe this is an ongoing discussion in the HT forums, glad you found a solution.  Most receviers nowadays have 5.1+ channel inputs so you can output your Audigy or Revo 7.1 to your receiver via analog cables for each channel.

If you don\'t have 5.1 inputs on your receiver or don\'t like to fool with 6+ cables, others prefer to go the nForce2 route that encodes to DD5.1 on the fly.  Lot less clutter and connections but the audio is compressed to a 640k bitstream.  Whatever works for you.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

2nd works for me.. The only way i could use the analog outputs on the sblive card is to go straight from the card to the sub. Which makes the reciever useless. I\'m pissed of with creative for saying this system is a 5.1 system. When infact it\'s a 5.1 Dolby Digital system only.

Even more pissed that the receiver doesn\'t support more then 1 analog input. It doesn\'t have any analog inputs for the Rear or center/sub channels. That\'ll teach me for getting a Creative speaker system. Although i bought it just for my pc and didn\'t wanna spend 200+ usd.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

I may not be able to get that board, so i\'ll probably get this one. Only difference is it doesn\'t have a Intel Lan chipset and DPS slot.


GA-7N400 Pro
nForce2 Ultra400 chipset
 
Processor
Socket A for AMD AthlonXP / Athlon / Duron processor

Chipset
NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 System Platform Processor (SPP)
Media and Communications Processor - Turbo (MCP-T)
Super I/O: ITE IT8712F chip
Silicon Image sil3112A controller
GigaRAID ATA 133 RAID controller
Realtek 8201 LAN PHY Chip
Realtek ALC650 Audio AC\'97 Codec
2 x 4M bit flash ROM

Front Side Bus
400/333/266 MHz FSB

Memory
Type:Dual Channel DDR400/ 333/ 266- 184pin
Max capacity: Up to 3GB by 4 DIMM slots

Internal I/O Connectors
2 x Serial ATA connector
4 x UDMA ATA 133/100/66 Bus Master IDE connectors
1 x FDD connector
1 x USB 2.0/1.1 connector
2 x IEEE 1394 connectors ( supports 3 ports)
S/P DIF input/output pin header
3 x cooling fan pin headers
WOL pin header
CD/AUX in
1 x Game/Midi connector

Expansion Slots
1 x AGP slot (8x/4x-AGP 3.0 compliant), supports 1.5v display card only.
5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant)

Rear Panel I/O
PS/2 Keyboard / Mouse
4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
1 x RJ45 ports
2 x COM ports
1 x LPT
Audio (1 x Line-in / 1 x Line-out / 1 x Mic)
connector

CPU/AGP/DIMM setting
CPU FSB / Multiplier / Vcore Voltage adjustable via BIOS
AGP Voltage / Clock adjustable via BIOS
DIMM Voltage / Clock adjustable via BIOS

Power
ATX power connector and ATX 12V connector
Power-off by Windows 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP shut down and switch

Form Factor
ATX form factor
30.5 x 24.4 cm

H/W Monitoring
System health status auto-detect and report by BIOS
Hardware detecting and reporting for case open, power-in voltage, CPU voltage, and fan speed.

BIOS
4M bit flash ROM, enhanced ACPI feature for PC98/Win98/Win2000/Me/ CE/XP compliance, Green, PnP, DMI, INT13 (>8.4GB) and Anti-Virus functions
IDE#1~#4, SCSI, LS120, ZIP and CD-ROM bootable

Other Features
EasyTune™4 (support the function of hardware monitoring only)
Suspend to RAM (STR)
Supports USB KB / MS wake up from S3

Bundle Software
Norton Internet Security™
Norton Anti Virus™
Norton™ Personal Firewall
Norton™ Privacy Control
Norton™ Parental Control
Norton™ Spam Alert

GIGABYTE Windows Utility Manager
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Adobe Acrobat e-Book Reader

Driver
nForce2 series system driver
REALTEK audio driver
Silcon Image Serial ATA driver
GigaRAID IDE RAID driver
NVIDIA LAN driver
USB2.0 driver