Soundstorm Equivalent Card for £10?

[Byatt]

So, having read http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19218, I went on a bit of a search for these c-media cards with the 8768 chipset - this, according to the article (if you can't be arsed to read it) is supposed to provide a similar functionality in terms of encoding to dolby 5.1 as soundstorm does - I am not entirely certain of this, but the "Dolby Digital Live" is listed on the specs page - how much of your CPU this would require and whether the PCI bus can handle it are two separate matters.

Now, with the amazing powers of google, I found this:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=64850

So, is this Soundstorm featureset in a £10 card, or am I missing something here? Anyone prepared to throw ebuyer a tenner to test it when they get back in stock?

Edit: ah well. Never mind.

[Steve]

The c-media product page suggests it's done through software.

"Valuable software technology:
Dolby Digital Live 5.1 (AC-3) Real-time Encoder(8768+)"

[MAS]

So just out of interest, what would it cost to put something equivalent to soundstorm in?

I'm a bit confused about it...I have a feeling the lack of soundstorm wont make that much difference to me; I've got 5.1 speakers for games, movies, etc but they're not connected digitally, am i likely to notice the difference in quality?

[DR]

Envy PT24...

[Steve]

That's a VIA chip isn't it David?

[Zak33]

Fact: 9/10 people dont really know how good or bad a sound card is

Fact: C-Media cards are pretty good, and for gaming, fine.

Fact: I am ful of bull, and I have had all the solutions really Soundstorm, CMedia , Audigy, and now Revolution 7.1

Soundstorm does the Dolby Digital on the fly in hardware, but its no use to me at all as I dont watch films. CMedia's basic 5.1 card (for £4) plays Il-2 like a super stud and the 3d perspective on headphones is just ace. Audigy does its own calculations without CPU power, so is good in benchmarks. And my favourite soundcard ever in the world is the Revolution 7.1 which drains the CPU, but on anythong over an XP2000+ is matters not one jot

Fact: None of my facts are really fact...they are me guessing.

Excluding that one /\

[javalord]

Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding is _only_ useful if your connecting your PC to a HI-FI system that supports DD 5.1 decoding. It does nothing for analog channels.