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Ian Hancock
Trending Lyricist I
December 7, 2018

Dolby Digital 5.1 from games on gaming PC I did it

I finally got a DD 5.1 stream from Battlefield V into my Beam and I am absolutely stoked! NVidia failed 2 channel PCM, onboard motherboard failed 2 channel PCM via SPDIF. Creative soundblaster Z ( 4 year old tech) with included Dolby Digital Live Success and it is truest worth all the sweat and tears and $70 for the card. No lag on encoding and the bullets are flying past my head in multiplayer and that tiger tank just exploded behind me and to my right. Hope this helps put other music fans who are also gamers! 😉
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      5 replies

      Edward R
      Edward R
      Retired Sonos Staff
      December 7, 2018
      Hey, Ian! I'm not a gamer but there are plenty at work. Someone from the non-tech department was talking about this the other day and they couldn't quite figure it out. Myself, having no knowledge of games consoles, I was unable to help.
      I'm going to refer them to this thread. Thanks!
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      Try searching our articles for help with your question: https://www.sonos.com/en/support
      Ian HancockAuthor
      Trending Lyricist I
      December 8, 2018
      Sure Edward, would be glad to help. The Soundblaster is configured with speaker out and not SPDIF. Turn on DD live in SBX studio and it will transcode from speaker out to the SPDIF on the card using the cards chipset instead of processor. I installed drivers from Creatives site and SBX Studio from the CD afterwards. I thought it had failed to work initially as I was getting no sound but that was because the Beam does not know there is an optical stream coming in unless you switch it to TV manually.
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      RandomPerson
      Trending Lyricist I
      January 4, 2019
      Just a heads up: There's a workaround available which enables Dolby Digital 5.1 surround support on 'any' endpoint (such as NVIDIA HDMI). Info can be found here: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1023992/geforce-drivers/-petition-add-5-1-7-1-dolby-digital-live-dts-connect-encoders-to-nvidia-hdmi-sound-drivers-/post/5921475/#5921475
      This way there's no need for extra hardware such as a Soundblaster.
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        ahg1985
        Contributor I
        January 27, 2019
        There is also the soundblaster ZX or ZXR and the Asus STX. Both output optical.
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          Ian HancockAuthor
          Trending Lyricist I
          January 27, 2019
          Yep some of the Asus cards support this as well. I would rather the additional hardware than patched drivers. I considered patching my motherboard Realtek before buying the Soundblaster but I spend enough time working with computers to want to mess around patching when I get home. So far Microsoft has not broken my official drivers.:D
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