thewarm:I was looking into the MSI Diva board for a different reason. I wanted to use the version with the 5x100 watt digital amplifier card to eliminate the need for my AV receiver. Which brings up another question... how many of you out there actually use the AM/FM tuner, phono, and other video inputs on your AVR? Wouldn't it be nice if a CE manufacturer made a surround pre-amp/amp with remote control? I use my Bravia TV to do the source switching and feed the optical output to my receiver.Back to the Diva... it uses a Realtek ALC888 chipset. This is similar to my AOpen motherboard. I can output different streams at the same time. Digital via optical and a different stream via the headphone jack. What I can NOT do is output the SAME stream simultaneously!I currently use an ATI video card with HDMI, DVI, and VGA. What I really wanted to do (a very simple request) was to output HDMI (audio/video) in the main viewing room + DVI and 2 channel analog audio to my bedroom. Not necessarily at the same time... Lets get this thread going again...
Sorry about stating the Diva board could do this. I was wrong. The 2nd zone analog audio outputs only work if your default device is set to D2Audio(the 5.1 amplifier or 7.1 pre-amp card). I always forget that it has 2 separate sound cards, thank you for pointing that out.
It would be nice to have a list of cards that will do this in Vista and Windows 7
Jay
My VMC system has the Realtek ALC888DD 7.1 channel High Definition Audio. Is there a way to control the selection of the output from within Media center?
pdiminico:My VMC system has the Realtek ALC888DD 7.1 channel High Definition Audio. Is there a way to control the selection of the output from within Media center?
pdiminico:Actually I am fine enabling the digital or analog out from my system. My analog output is for my back yard while the digital output is for my family room. From my desktop I can change my default output but, I would rather be able to change the audio out from within VMC without returning to my desktop.
There is a guy who wrote a utilitiy for VMC that will do this. Its called AudioSwitcher. I dont have a exact link for you however it is burried in this thread somewhere. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1003579&page=39
Growler:That may help some. If I can split my toslink out I can send one side to this box below that will put out analog. Is there a commercially available 'Y' connector for toslink?
Growler:So, it sounds like this issue has still not been resolved. There were two things I read about I thought had promise: USB sound card- I thought being USB controlled maybe Vista would not be able to lock out simultaneous analog and digital sound Tritton AX360- This device is supposed to input optical and make both optical and output both digital and analog.
Check this device: http://www.atlona.com/Atlona-HDMI-1.3-Audio-De-Embedder-p-17801.html
"The Atlona AT-HD570 is a professional quality HDMI (1.3) Audio De-Embedder. Unit is capable of accepting an HDMI input signal and de-embeds the audio signal to either Optical or Multi-Channel audio outputs. This audio decoder supports uncompressed analog LPCM 7.1 and new lossless compressed digital Bit stream (Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD Master Audio)."
From another post I found, this appears to be the same device for half the price: http://www.ambery.com/2hddodtsdihd.html. I just ordered one so sometime next week I will report in if it will downmix Dolby Digital 5.1 down to two channel stereo out the analog output.
My Media Center machine outputs HDMI video with audio so I will feed the signal into the Ambery device and pass the HDMI through to my stereo for full Dolby Digital/DTS processing. I will set the Ambery to output 2 channel and feed the analog signal direct to the TV for when I don't want to turn on the stereo (like for the news broadcasts and whatnot).