Dolby Digital Live?

[oblivion666]

So, what exactly will Dolby Digital Live do? I play some games that only support stereo, but my receiver uses prologic to make the stereo audio come out of all my speakers sounding the same. If I use Dolby Digital Live will this make the game output as 5.1 with positional support?

 

[gamerk316]

Dolby Digital Live encodes any audio stream to Dolby Digital format. Note, if the source is beyond 5.1, the extra channels are dropped. Also note, no upmixing is performed (2.0 audio encoded using Dolby Digital Live will still output as 2.0 audio, even though the format itself is 5.1; Dolby Pro Logic/CMSS3D can still be used to upmix, however).

Dolby Digital Live has one purpose: To make a 5.1 stream fit over an optical/coaxial digital connection. (Uncompressed 5.1 audio is too large to fit over a SPDIF connection, where compressed formats like Dolby/DTS are small enough to fit).

 

[oblivion666]

So, if my games run and sound great and even have postional audio based on my location running in full 5.1 prologic 2 there really is not a use to get Dolby Digital Live? As far as media I see this useless also. If you want to run music of video in Dolby Digital all you have to do is get ffdshow using a SPDIF connection turn the resample to 4800 and enable 5.1 AC3 decoding and you will output as SPDIF Dolby Digital.

What I really wanted to expect from Dolby Digital was to make my games sound even more amazing. If I am running the game in source 5.1 I want to hear every explosion to the right or left based on my location the whole 360 degree positional audio.

Like when you watch a movie in 5.1 AC3 and the voices are in the center and than you get a suprise from the right and left is what I really wanted in games.

 

[gamerk316]

DDL is needed only for digital (SPDIF) connections, as uncompressed 5.1 audio can not fit over a SPDIF connection (ie, the signal must be encoed in either DD or DTS formats). Hence, SPDIF can only get 2.0 audio unless DDL/DTS-C is used. If you use analog (or HDMI), then this tech means nothing whatsoever (unless for some reason you want all audio converted to a DD stream...)

Basically, if a game used 5.1 and digital SPDIF was the connection scheme, only 2.0 would be outputted unless DDL was used, in which case the full 5.1 could be carried over the wire.

On the other hand, if the game used 2.0 and DDL was used, the output is still 2.0.

For users with HDMI outputs from their output device, ffdshow can be used to simply output uncompressed 5.1 audio (such as ATI cards), but most soundcards are still limited to 7.1 analog and 5.1 SPDIF outputs. So if you wanted to output a 5.1 digital signal from a soundcard, DDL is an essential tech.

 

[MEgamer]

well i use dolby digital live on asus xonar, to upmix my stereo signal to 5.1 dolby virtual speaker, when playing moveis and games, and i dont use spdif, i use just a normal 3.5 mm jkack and it works...

dolby digital live, is a real-time encoding technology, Dolby Digital Live converts any audio signal into a Dolby Digital bitstream for transport and playback through a home theater system

u do however need a spdif if u are connectin it to a receiver, but i have a sound card, where the core works happens there so ye.