What digital sound card do you recommend?

[Brian]

Let m first say I "hate" ATI. Their latest drivers suck. I was able to get my 9600 working with ubuntu at 1920x1080 for a few days, then ddc just stopped working and wouldn't detect my displays properly. My other ancient GeForce 6800 AGP GTX card works perfectly with the latest 177 beta nVidia drivers.

Ok... So I'm done complaining..

Do any of you know what would be the best supported 7.1 digital sound card for Linux? I'm currently still stuck using the on-board 2 channel analog card.

Does boxee even support multi-channel? I see the Analog/Digital options.

Dolby Digital
DTS
THX
5.1, 7.1, LFE, surround sound. etc...



Thanks for any advice. I'd like to run to Fry's and pick one up today.

[tsella]

boxee uses alsa (http://www.alsa-project.org), so any alsa compatible card (http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Soundcard-Tags) should work.

according to their wiki, the following cards support 7.1: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Special:Whatlinkshere/Matrix:Tag-7.1

note we have not tested with 7.1 (5.1 works very well, tough, regarding us supporting multichannel) audio playback, so your mileage may vary. be glad to hear of your experiance.

[Gamester17]

according to their wiki, the following cards support 7.1: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Special:Whatlinkshere/Matrix:Tag-7.1I think those are ANALOG-OUT 7.1 cards, and Boxee/XBMC does not support 7.1 ANALOG-OUT.

I believe that in theory all ALSA compatible cards that support DIGITAL-OUT pass-through should support DD/DTS 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 as it is only passing the stream along 'as is', it is then up to the receiver to do the decoding.

...I would not swear by the above statement though, best is to ask in the ALSA mailing-list for users: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Mailing-lists
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user

[Brian]

Thanks for the reply,

I've decided to go with the on-board SPDIF output connector. Apparently it supports 6 channel audio. I suspect that means 5.1.


http://www.excaliberpc.com/551265/asus-motherboard-accessories-spdif-out.html

[Gamester17]

I've decided to go with the on-board SPDIF output connector. Apparently it supports 6 channel audio. I suspect that means 5.1Yes 6-channels means 5.1 ...but like I said, it is possible that it can handle 6.1 (7-channels) and 7.1 (8-channels) as well though SP/DIF digital pass-through even on that onboard card that sais it only support 6-channel output. Try it and find out, report back here ;)