Short short Version:
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Hey all I have a very Tech question for those out there who knowledgeable with Digital Sound (DD 5.1/DTS) Computers
and Skyrim.. I have two question.. The one is concerned getting DD 5.1 laptop for Skyrim.

The 2nd question is, If my laptop/hardware can't output a 5.1 Digital sound out. Is there USB type sound device
that could ?
if not then I assume my only answer would be trade/give laptop somebody else and upgrade
to one that has DD 5.1 output.. Which I have already been thinking about.. But that's on last of this list..

Detail: Long version Question:

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Question 1 : Does Skyrim have DD 5.1/DTS Sound support.. I assume/figure it does on xbox 360/Ps3,
as all my 360/Ps3 games support one or the other... Has anybody been able get 5.1 Digital sound
on there system.. That mean going threw a AMP/Receiver.. (Digital out) not just 5 speakers hooked up..

Problem: Asus N61jq may/may not support 5.1 out via either HDMI or SPDIF?
Asus email me and said no.. but Laptop via HDMI should. Shouldn't it?
I am pretty sure it mostly due to my on board sound card with my Laptop. I so hate Realtec sound chips..

System Specs:

Asus N61jq Laptop i7 1.7 Ghz
4Gb Ram
ATI Radeon 5730 1gb with HDMI 1.4 out..
Win 7 64bit
Blue Ray/DVD RW drive
Realtec onboard

See the spec here http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Multimedia_Entertainment/N61Jq/#specifications
(( Note my Laptop has the i7 Cpu. I have tested this with Cpuiz util. Asus just has not updated that page)
(( Windows reports i7 Q740 1.73 Ghz )


My laptop does not seem to have the Toslink Digital output (Digital Optical Audio Connector) I sooo wish it did. But per the manual it has these outputs
---
1 x Headphone-out jack (SPDIF)
1 x HDMI
--

Now from my understand... Normally you'd have 3 option for when comes to getting either Dolby digital / DTS sound..
1: Toslink output (Digital Optical Audio Connector)
2: SPDIF connection.
3: HDMI

Now there is no Sound option within Skyrim that I know about that will let you choose from anolog or digital sound.. Some games do...
My RealTek does have very simple settings for Digital out.. Looks HDMI output. I do have DD 5.1 /DTS Yamaha older Amp/Receiver that works fine for my xbox 360/ps3 games because I am using the
Toslink output from both my 360/ps3...

Has anybody every hurd of headphone type jack that is used for SPDIF 5.1 ?
I know I have used the older SPDIF for my older Dish at my parents place to get 5.1 Sound from it..( Movie Central/HBO etc etc via dish when watching movie ))
True I do find that RCA type connection for SPDIF is not as clear as say a Toslink connection is..

So Asus said " No your laptop can not output 5.1 " but the website says "Yes" Vaguly
and the ATI video card on HDMI out should be able correct? So does any body have any suggestions, if Skyrim even supports 5.1 out and how I might able to hear Digital
5.1 while I play on my laptop.. Its why I bought PC version of skyrim. Cuz I know I could plug HDMI cable to my tv and be just like play 360 version. but better with Mods! lol

I have few option..
- some kind of adapter I could attach to HDMI that give me Toslink Digital out.. (never hurd such a thing)
- Find this headphone jack type that is SPDIF out that I can plug into Amp
- Trade the Laptop in for better one that has Toslink Digital out..

Trade option with Laptop/Gaming Laptop has digital out maybe my only option, But I hope not..

The game uses XAudio2, which is an Xbox360 audio api, designed by microsoft, which prolly means its based on directsound, which on vista/windows 7 means software based sound.

So the games does not support hardware DD 5.1? It must.. As long you can do DD 5.1/DTS in windows.. I get the feeling my laptop can do 5.1 digital. But stupid Realtec didn't make a decent Software.
Thats my theory.. Cuz I should be able play threw HDMI or SPDIF connection..

Skyrim DOES support 5.1 surround sound. I use HDMI to output sound and video to an external sound receiver. I get true surround sound, which means sound behind me and to the left will register on that speaker. It sounds fantastic.

Skyrim like most games will output multichannel positional sound based on the speaker preference set in windows, it will not however output an encoded Dolby Digital 5.1 signal for your toslink or HDMI connector. To my knowledge there is not game at all that actually output a DD 5.1 signal on pc.
It's up to your Soundcard/chip to encode this on the fly for your receiver to decode.

So unless your sound chip can encode multichannel into Dolby Digital 5.1 in real time, you will only get a stereo PCM signal through toslink/hdmi.

I can confirm the game supports surround sound and it works just fine when using X-Fi's DDL or DTS Connect encoders.

Yeah does not say anywhere on the back CD box that supports Dolby digital/DTS like the Xbox/ps3 version doo... I just wanted to make sure..
Thanks. Now if I can just find a way/find some cable that I can use to get DTS or DD 5.1.

as I said I think my Headphone jack out is 2 in 1, it outputs stereo and it might be SPDIF too.. Per website. I just never hurd headphone jack like plug that can do digital to external receiver.
I only knew about HDMI/ Toslink and old SPDIF (which is like RCA type)

There is that red light that comes out from Headphone out jack. kinda like same red light you see with Toslink Digital out.. So I'm trying find out if there
is such type of cable. Though they must be rare?

i have a pair of g35 head phones they are 7.1 surround sound from dolby labs also they have a mic built on so if you do alot of clan matches or talk online there great , if you dont want to use the mic just push it up and it will auto mute its self , i get them for 3100 from pc world and i would say to any1 get them they are well worth it http://www.logitech.com/en-gb/webcam-communications/internet-headsets-phones/devices/5095

p.s forgot to mention they are usb plug very easy to install so max 7.1 down the usb lead great

Yes, like i said, the game does not support DD 5.1 or DTS, but it does support Surround sound just like any other pc game.
For DD 5.1 or DTS to work in your audio receiver the signal must be digital and it must be Encoded in either DD 5.1 or DTS format. The game it self does NOT deliver a digital encoded signal, but it does output surround sound.

So it isn't as simple as just getting a cable to connect to your laptop, your laptop must be able to encode the surround sound output of the game into DD 5.1 or DTS for your receiver.
I downloaded the PDF manual for your laptop but it didn't say much about the audio capabilities, from google searches i see it's a Realtek chip but i can't find exactly what chip it has, I do know there are some realtek audio chips that do support DDL encoding on the fly.
If there was any bundled audio mixer with the laptop, look there if there is an option to Encode into DD 5.1 or DTS via Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect and also check if the headphone out or Mic in is multi functional, on some laptops and soundcards one of the connectors can also double as an SPDIF out.

That option is only for reading from the CD itself... CD's once had seporate output... The DIGITAL had a special plug that attached directly to a sound-card, for digital mixing. This usually only applied to the background music, as your CD would play that like a normal CD, as opposed to using the CD's internal 16-bit ADC PCM converter, pushing anolog sound to your input/mic on the sound-card. Which then had to convert it to digital, to mix it, and then back to 24-bit sound, once mixed, and pushed out to speakers.

EG... there is no more anolog sound. The 24-bit ADC is standard. All audio comes from OGG and/or MP3 and/or WMA audio, which is digital, stored in a file, mixed as digital, no longer mixed as anolog... then finally converted to anolog at the card.

I'm using the optical output on a Gigabyte Z68 board with the Realtek chipset. Movies are Dolby Digital but Skryrim is only Dolby Surround which is 2 channel. I asked this question in another thread and was told I needed a card that can support DD live streaming as movies are prerecorded.

Yeah I hate the RealTek onboard audio chipsets. Long ago I had older Asus motherboard that had Nvidia Nforce Audio chipset that would do the full onboard encoded to DTS or Digital 5.1. I remember hooking up Toslink to same
old Yamaha receiver I have, playing Half life 2 on it and it just sounded soo sweet in full 5.1 Dolby digital sound..

Well yeah the manual is very "vague" on the audio options, Its kinda why I bought this laptop as was sold as Multimedia system. as in able watch/play Blue Ray movies with 5.1 sound. (as long Blue ray player software is 5.1 able. as I know
they do sell you Version that will only do stereo...Grrr ))
Now I have built/put systems together before, So I do have some general knowledge, but has been awhile.. I kinda rushed when I bought my new Asus laptop. The Battery is crap on it/she runs too hot and ATI video card
in this laptop is not as strong as I first thought. And now it seem it also may not be able to do 5.1 Digital out..

I have also older home built computer which does have Toslink digital out. But yea its crappy RealTek on-board crap sound chip
-Pentium D 3.0 GHZ (not overclocked)
-Evga 680i SLI LT maiboard
-Evga 8800 GTS 320 MB (O/clocked to superclocked version )
-3 GB Ram
-320 MB/80 HDD
-Win 7 64 bit
-RealTec crappy onboard sound w/Toslink digital out

I have tried and tired and could not get it to play HL2 in DD 5.1. I have searched steam forms, ask and spoke to a few and seems more few other RealTek people
have same problems when comes to most steam games.. I think I just gave up. and new only way was buy better Sound card.
I never did buy one. lol End up buying my Ps3 then later xbox 360 lol.. now old girl (Pentium D) collect dust..

So my hopes of this laptop actually able output 5.1 Digital out to my Yahama Amp for Skyrim are prety slim at best.
Because I have never liked RealTec and there abbily to do 5.1 Digital out has not been good so far with me.

So yeah but if you look at the spec from there website for my laptop. You'll see it says
1 Headphone Jack - (SPDIF)
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Multimedia_Entertainment/N61Jq/

So that gives me a bit of hope. but I have NEVER seen a headphone like jack..
but as you also say.. If the on board can't encode it digital.. I maybe screwed..

The only other option is threw HDMI out. but there nothing in my ATI CC that gives any Audio option to output sound.
The only option in realTec is to pick Speakers out or Digital out..

so one of two things.. Headphone jack can do speakers and Digital out?
or Headphone jack is only for speakers and HDMI can do digital out.




Anywho , my home built computer does have Toslink digital output on it. I have had hooked up to my Yamaha and I can not for life of me, get it to play Half life 2 in DD 5.1.
However. I can test within Windows (win 7 64bit.) threw control panel in the sound setting to test DTS and Dolby Digital.. My Amp will click and Digital will kick in on my Amp..
But when I try load steam/HL2.. It will not play. I tried and tried to figure out what was wrong but I think I read somwhere on steam forms
that it was well known " RealTek " sound card issuse with steam games..

Yeah I only need the Laptop/My Asus to output a digital single, either threw the HDMI or SPDIF (headphone jack).
I think what I have found is called Mini Toslink cable..
http://ca.startech.com/Cables/Audio-Video/Toslink/10-ft-Toslink-to-Mini-Digital-Audio-Cable~THINTOSMIN10
As I said. There does seems be similar Red light/Lazer type from jack on my headphone jack on Asus laptop. And per website
Said SPDIF. (similar to normal Toslink digital out.)
Now weither it will actually output digital sound out to my receiver is unknown. I might go pick one up later and try it..
its not to expensive.

What do you mean CD itself. I don't quite understand what you mean..

and if its all Digital. Then shouldn't be not the sound chipset that does the ecodeing. All it has to do is passthrough/Out and my Receiver decode
it to Dolby digital..

It stange that Xbox/ps3 have DD 5.1/ DTS 5.1 as long as you had the hardward/Receiver that can play it back.

Yes, I see too on the asus site it lists the headphone jack as also SPDIF.
However, that alone does not mean you can out put 5.1 through it from games.
The reason you can get 5.1 from Blueray and Dvd movies is because the audio on those discs is already encoded in the respective formats. The SPDIF in this case (should) only acts as a pass through and your soundcard (the realtek chip) don't do anything to the signal at all.

The problem with your home built computer and HL2 is the exact same you get with Skyrim or any other pc game for that matter. They do not output a digital encoded signal by them selves, but they do output surround sound via the windows sound api.
Had you connected your computer via the 3 anologue cables (Left right, surround left and right, and center + sub) you would get surround from your receiver. In this configuration you have effectively bypassed the Encoding/Decoding part and the surround is not DD5.1 or DTS, but it's still surround.

I know this may be rather confusing, but surround sound in a pc game is not the same as an encoded DD5.1 or DTS surround signal found on a DVD, BlueRay or PS3/360 game (the consoles do the encoding in real time on the fly via software/hardware).


So these are your options to get surround sound to your receiver in a PC game:
Use the 3 anologue cables (bypassing any need of encoding/decoding). This requires your soundcard to have multiple outs, and your receiver to have multiple anologue ins

Toslink/SPDIF. This configuration requires Hardware/Software support from your soundcard to encode the surround sound signals into DD5.1 or DTS. This is called Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect.

If you have Toslink/SPDIF out but not hardware/software support for DDL or DTS Connect you will get only a Stereo PCM signal to your receiver, nothing you can do about that.

I have an X-Fi Fatality Champion, the first generation card. It does have Toslink and Spdif outs, but when it was released you could only get surround sound via the anologue outs, but my receiver only have anologue inputs for stereo and none for surround.
So it was impossible for me to get surround sound from PC games, I would only get surround from DVD movies when the SPDIF is set to passthrough (since the audio on a dvd movie is already encoded and it would be pointless to let the software player decode)
Later Creative released a driver update for 5$ that added DDL and DTS Connect encoding on the fly, and now I get DD5.1 or DTS in all my PC games.
This is achieved by mixing the surround sound in hardware using the Asio support of the card and then encoding with software (the encoding is done on the cpu and not the soundcard)

I could not find what kind of Realtek chip is in your laptop so I dunno if you can ever get it to work or not.

Another option would be to buy an USB Soundcard such as one from creative, they have the same features as the internal soundcards do so they should too come with DDL and DTS Connect.

Very very long story short:

Unless you have an onboard Dolby chip (which I had on an old MSI SFF Pc) - you won't be able to output TRUE 5.1.

You need a soundcard which can decode "dolby digital live" or "DTS Live" - if your soundcard cant' do that, you need to upgrade.

I'm running a Creative xfi Titainium Fatal1ty pro soundcard in my (apparently too powerful) PC. It does these things and certain does support positional audio in the game.

Every game does positional audio, if you have the soundcard.

Realtek is far from being "crappy"...

You have to blame your motherboard manufacturer for picking the realtek chipset they did.

Realtek produce many chips within a series...

There are a few realtek chips that provide either or both Dolby Digital Live! or DTS Connect..

typically it's the D revision of the chipsets that have this functionality.

The reason it's not included on EVERY realtek chipset is due to the fact that royalties and licensing must be paid for each individual chip made.

So in order to keep motherboard costs low, they get the non DDL/DTS-C realtek chipsets and slap them on the board.

Realtek is by far one of the BEST intergrated audio platforms in the world, and by far the best overall in the audio department when it comes to pc audio...

Realtek is the only company that provides frequent driver updates the resolves issues that people may be having or improves functionality..

where as lets take creative or soundmax (ADL) or whatever other manufacturer, your lucky to see a new driver once a year, and usually that new driver won't work on older chips.. Dell loves ADL.....

There are gurus at work trying to see if they can enable DDL/DTS-C on a software level for existing realtek chips. from what some have figured out, it doesn't appear to be a hardware level requirement to get the function, and computers are fast enough to do it all in software anyways, Sound is very VERY easy to encode in realtime. Actually since vista/win7, all of it is always encoded on the fly, none of it is done in hardware.

There are no anolog audio tracks on the CD. So yes, it is all digital, but not played from the CD, played from the HD files. (Some old games had raw music tracks, plus data. Yes it is all digital, but there is a diference between anolog-data raw-pcm, and FLAC, MP3, WMA, OGG, which has to be processed and turned into RAW-PCM to be heard. Old CD players actually had a PCM conveter chip, which output anolog from PCM or MP3 or OGG or FLAC etc... Now they don't. They all output only data, like a hard-drive. Thus, no more functioning option of "Use digital data". Essentially, the CD player is just an optical hard drive now, not a walkman/optical-drive. You can take an old PC CD player and use it like a walkman, without drivers, just by powering it up and using the PLAY button on the front of the drive. It bacame too expensive to obtain rights to compression decoding chips. People didn't like paying $100 for a CD drive, and compression never worked right for decoding when bad encoders were used. So they went to faster software converters, which we all use now. Same thing that sound-cards did...)

Saying you are the best integrated audio is like saying you are the best dishwasher in the world... (Just saying. BTW, I am the best dishwasher in the world.)

Real HD would never allow a chip to be on-board... only junk goes on-board. (HD requires heavy noise isolation and MUST be AWAY from noisy high-frequency chips like the CPU.)

It is on-board sound, which is put there to save you money and fill space on the MoBo, and provide standard sounds, and some advanced features. The chip is irrelevant to the connected hardware, which is non-existent for on-board sound. It is noisy, slow, buggy, and software dependant. Only GREAT for streaming mid-fi sounds, as hi-fi is full of noise, low-powered, delayed, and fails to mix correctly, on ALL on-board audio, which sits in close proximity to the power-lines, the noisy CPU and the PCI bridge.

On-board audio was made to hear DVD and streaming sounds, and play "Ding" when windows makes an error. As opposed to "Beep" by the system speaker. It was NEVER intended for HD-quality recording, playback, mixing and games.

Updates are frequent... Only for high-dollar chips, which are not on-board. However, having one on-board, which also has a High-dollar actual sound-card, gives you access to compatible upgrades. The problem is... it constantly needs upgrades to work correctly, or function at all.

It is a low-end soft-sound chip. Simulated audio. Nothing HD about the chips, other than simulated surround sound, which has nothing to do with HD. Mono can be HD. Having 5.1 or 7.1 does not make something HD.

ahhh sorry I was half asleep when I replied. Now I know what you mean..

BTW. I Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z9TdDCWN7g. I have mod that plays her song in inn's in Skyrim
that just sound.. Very HD ish lol Her song should be official apart of Skyrim

Audio tests outside of that, show otherwise..

The way encoding/decoding occurs, provided you don't use anolog (if you recall, we aren't discussing anolog audio which requires a conversation from digital to anolog (DAC). DAC's on any onboard solution will ALWAYS be inferior to the higher quality and isolated add-in cards.. but they are still not perfect in any way, even the professional series.

But lets not confuse anolog with digital right now.

As you should be well aware, When it comes to digital systems, where no anolog is involved, and ZERO anolog is outputted from the chip, meaning either passthrough or digital formats are sent via the onboard chip. There is ZERO difference between a professional series card and an onboard chipset. Zero, zilch, zip.

If you outputting even a PCM digital audio via coax/optical (spdif/toslink), the sampling is no different then what a $2000 professional series audio card can do following the same standards. Mixing is identical, Audio reproduction is exact, everything. No performance differences, actually there is higher latencies for the professional series as there is more travel time and more involved hardware wise where as the onboard solution is much closer and very little to no hardware overhead. And for convienence sake, lets just say even though the software end of the onboard solution is usually always less bulky and less involved driver wise, we'll just say both are identical.

Like i said though, Win7/Vista are software, they don't use the hardware end of the devices to "accelerater" anything....


So if your playing back through any digital connection, doesn't matter if it's optical/hdmi/coax(RCA), The digital signal sent to the receiver will have no noise, no difference, nothing will be changed between the 2 cards.

If you take a 8 channel HDMI PCM Lossless digital audio, which indeed works as the format is directly supported via windows vista/7 through to a receiver able to support it, again, there is no difference, you cutoffs will be exactly the same, your "noise" will be identical, everything will be EXACT if your using the same receiver.. All the work is in the end done by the receiver in the end.

I agree with you. I always avoid onboard sound cards/chips sets when all is possible. But there, has been only one chipset
that changed my look on onboard sound cards. Long ago as I said before. I had older Asus motherboard. Which had nForce 3 or 4 chipset with MPC.
I think was nForce4 and had actual on-board Nvidia sound chip system that was able to do full encoding of Dolby Digital 5.1

Omg I loved that sounds system.. It was soo much better then RealTec. Sure it wasn't maybe as high end as say buying
actual add on sound card, but it was good enough for me.. It control panel was bit twichy in winxp at the time.

but I loved it soo much I wish I could have slapped it onto PCI Card lol. But then again Nvidia usailly makes good
stuff.. Its why I end up buying and building my Evga 680i SLI LT motherboard.. Because I hoped it would
also have Nvidia sound chip install on it too. NOPE.. Crappy Realtec crap.

Seems every motherboard has either Intel or RealTec. At-lest at the time when I bought it. I have always Loved Nvidia way more
ATI. Forgive me saying this, but seems mid-range ATI products always seemed unfinished/or half ass done..

Anywho I am getting bit off topic here.. I hate RealTec soo much.. They continue to Plague the PC world, with there CHEAP
poorly made Software/hardware chipsets. I have more problems with them then any other sound company.

TO everybody Else:
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So it sounds like even if I buy this Mini-Toslink cable for my current Asus laptop.(SPDIF) The onboard audio still will not output Digital out to my Yamaha amp
I may be able get a Pro Logic Surrounded from my Yamaha Amp for Skyrim. but it still not much better then 2 Channel I'm currently getting.

This is why I bought xbox 360/ps3 because 95% there games have either DD 5.1 on 360 and DTS/DD 5.1 on Ps3.
so There is USB soundcards out there? I could buy one for my Asus Laptop and that help get me DD 5.1 for skyrim?