5.1 optical out sound card for Vegas / Win7 64bit?

Skaven252 wrote on 4/20/2010, 2:54 AM
My old work PC used to work in 5.1 in Vegas gloriously. But I recently got a new work PC running 64-bit Windows 7. I'm having a lot of difficulty getting 5.1 audio work via the optical out in Vegas Pro 9.0d.

Specifics:
My amplifier / receiver accepts Pro Logic, Dolby Digital and DTS via the optical input. It also accepts Pro Logic, but not sure if it's 5.1.

The PC's motherboard's optical out only outputs Pro Logic. It doesn't encode Dolby Digital.

To fix the above issue, I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro sound card, that supports Dolby Digital Live and DTS, but this requires "exclusive control" of the audio output, and starts the CTAudSvc.exe (Creative Audio Service).

HOWEVER, when CTAudSvc.exe is running, the receiver reports it's receiving Dolby Digital - but no application can actually play any sound! When I try to audit Vegas in 5.1 Surround, I get an error message, "Audio device already in use". So does the Sounds control panel.

When I kill CTAudSvc.exe, the Windows control panel can test-play all 5.1 speakers individually, but Vegas doesn't work in Surround (because it doesn't encode Dolby Digital Live nor works with Pro Logic 5.1?).

Is this a Windows 7 64-bit issue, ie lack of proper drivers for the Sound Blaster, or something else?

Already tried updating to latest Creative drivers, and also installed the "Product Identification Module Update" and the "Dolby Digital Live Pack", no avail.

So... does anyone know any optical out Dolby Digital (or DTS) 5.1 sound cards that actually, reliably work on Windows 7 64-bit?

Thanks!

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 4/20/2010, 10:51 AM
First of all, Vegas does not output encoded Dolby 5.1 from the timeline. I don't believe that 9d is any different in this respect. It will output discrete 6 channel PCM through the audio busses, so in order to preview a surround project from the timeline, you need a sound interface with six discrete I/O channel pairs. Most 5.1 cards do not provide this.

Playing of 5.1 encoded files is done using these cards (given appropriate destination equipment), but there are few if any, that actually encode realtime 5.1 from discrete PCM multichannel sources.
Skaven252 wrote on 4/21/2010, 4:46 AM
Everyone seems to point that out.

The Sound Blaster I used earlier did the Dolby Digital encoding before feeding it to the amplifier. It worked with Vegas in 5.1 via the optical output. There was latency, but in my line of work this was not a problem.

I asked around in another forum, and got recommended either Auzentech sound cards, or the Asus Xonar U1 external USB sound card; it encodes Dolby Digital Live to its optical output.

Until then, I solved the problem by just using the analog cables from the motherboard onboard audio chip. It has a nasty background buzz, but I'll live with it until we get the U1.
Skaven252 wrote on 4/27/2010, 7:03 AM
From the Sony site:

"Vegas Pro 9 software includes Windows Media™ 9 Series 5.1 encoding support. 5.1 Dolby Digital AC-3 encoding is also supported, but requires the Sony Media Software AC-3 encoding plug-in which is included in the Vegas Pro 9 collection."

What exactly does this mean? Does it do it in real time? Where can I find this encoding plug-in?

Or is it just an export plugin?
MarkWWW wrote on 4/27/2010, 1:33 PM
It means that Vegas 9 can render to .wma in 5.1 surround. It can also render to AC3 in 5.1 surround, but to do this you need to use the AC-3 encoder which is installed along with DVD Architect (it isn't part of the bare Vegas installation).

Neither of these processes are "real time" if by "real time" you actually mean "able to stream the encoded output directly to the soundcard output" - they both render the output to a file in the usual way.

Mark
Skaven252 wrote on 5/3/2010, 2:45 AM
I finally got it to work via DTS. Sound blaster X-Fi Titanium etc supports realtime 5.1 DTS and Dolby Digital encoding via software, but it's somewhat tricky. The analog outputs need to be selected as the Default Device, and realtime encoding (either Dolby Digital Live or DTS Neo:PC) enabled from the control panel. Both of which tend to disable themselves spontaneously.

But I'm still glad I got it working. :)