Astro A50 Gen 2 + ASUS Xonar AE

[adamradford23]

Hi,

I recently purchased an Asus Xonar Ae 7.1 PCIe Gaming Sound Card so i could use 7.1 surround sound on my Astro's. But no matter what i try i haven't been able to get it to output 7.1

1. Sonic Studio keeps only letting me output as stereo when selecting SPDIF Out

2. when i activate Dolby Atmos in my spacial surround sound it doesn't do anything.

any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated as i feel like i've just wasted $90.

Thanks in advance!

 

[gamerk316]

1: SPDIF is limited to three audio formats: Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital, and 5.1 DTS. As PCs don't typically use Dolby or DTS formats, you need to convert uncompressed 5.1 into one of these formats. I'm unsure if if the Xonar AE supports Dolby Digital Live or DTS-C, which perform this for Dolby/DTS formats.

2: Typically, older Xonar cards achieve virtual surround via Dolby Headphone. I'm unsure if this is changed on the AE, but you would typically do this by setting the number of output channels to two and enabling Dolby Headphone.

 

[adamradford23]

1: SPDIF is limited to three audio formats: Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital, and 5.1 DTS. As PCs don't typically use Dolby or DTS formats, you need to convert uncompressed 5.1 into one of these formats. I'm unsure if if the Xonar AE supports Dolby Digital Live or DTS-C, which perform this for Dolby/DTS formats.

2: Typically, older Xonar cards achieve virtual surround via Dolby Headphone. I'm unsure if this is changed on the AE, but you would typically do this by setting the number of output channels to two and enabling Dolby Headphone.

So to get my 7.1 working i either need a different card or headset, or figure out how to change the output from uncompressed 5.1 to dolby 5.1?
Is there a program i need to use to do this?
Bit of a noob at this sorry

 

[gamerk316]

1: SPDIF is limited to three audio formats: Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital, and 5.1 DTS. As PCs don't typically use Dolby or DTS formats, you need to convert uncompressed 5.1 into one of these formats. I'm unsure if if the Xonar AE supports Dolby Digital Live or DTS-C, which perform this for Dolby/DTS formats.

2: Typically, older Xonar cards achieve virtual surround via Dolby Headphone. I'm unsure if this is changed on the AE, but you would typically do this by setting the number of output channels to two and enabling Dolby Headphone.

So to get my 7.1 working i either need a different card or headset, or figure out how to change the output from uncompressed 5.1 to dolby 5.1?
Is there a program i need to use to do this?
Bit of a noob at this sorry

Typically, dedicated soundcards will support one of Dolby Digital Live or DTS-Connect which allow an uncompressed 5.1 audio stream to be converted in realtime to Dolby or DTS format. I've looked, but I can't find any indication the AE supports either.

The AE does support Virtual Surround, which should work. Again, I can't find any confirmation how it's done, but there's clearly an option for it.

 

[1Reality1]

1: SPDIF is limited to three audio formats: Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital, and 5.1 DTS. As PCs don't typically use Dolby or DTS formats, you need to convert uncompressed 5.1 into one of these formats. I'm unsure if if the Xonar AE supports Dolby Digital Live or DTS-C, which perform this for Dolby/DTS formats.

2: Typically, older Xonar cards achieve virtual surround via Dolby Headphone. I'm unsure if this is changed on the AE, but you would typically do this by setting the number of output channels to two and enabling Dolby Headphone.

So to get my 7.1 working i either need a different card or headset, or figure out how to change the output from uncompressed 5.1 to dolby 5.1?
Is there a program i need to use to do this?
Bit of a noob at this sorry

Admittedly, I don't know how to do this. However, after reading this thread, I became interested and did a quick search to see if I could find anything. I came-up with this interesting reply to someone in another forum asking, in essence, the same question:

"You can't really do it with your existing equipment. You would need a surround receiver to decode the trueHD and DTSHD, Dolby Digtial, etc, for all the different surround formats and output it to the correct speakers. The surround formats are usually licensed by a company in order to be able to decode them, so you need something that can do it.

The only way the video card does it, is over HDMI, which would connect to a receiver, usually called a AVR receiver. You would then need surround speakers as well. The denon e-series like the e-200 or e-400 are a great receiver.

The other way is getting PC based surround speakers, which usually plug into the different colored ports on the motherboard and each speaker has a separate input. This works, but leaves all the decoding up to the software itself. So if it's something that has trueHD audio, the media player you are using has to be able to decode it, and those usually cost money, because they have to pay for the license.

What are you intentions. Gaming in 5.1 or watching blurays from a bluray drive? This will make a big diffreence. Games don't use truehd/dts/etc, they just usually output to the correct channel and that's that. Movies are where the magic comes into play."

I haven't done it myself, so I cannot attest to the validity of the information for certain, but I hope it at least gets you pointed in a helpful direction.