Finally upgraded my pc to play dvd's.
current config is

AMD 64 3200 2G
1G dual channel DDR ram
ATI extasy 256 PCI express video card
chaintech a-710 sound card.
DVD drive

My question is, how can I set up my sound so that I can output music through the optical out in 44khz instead of converting the music to 48 khs, and also bpass any sorts of soundprocessing from the computer? And what do I have to do to be able to play Dolby digital 5.1 and DTS through my reciever?

any help would be appreciated.

I have that card, and I dont know about the 44/48 kHz sampling frequency as that is not something Ive ever looked into (do you have high end enough equipment, as to where the sampling frequency will be noticed??)

As for the 5.1/DTS just enable the SPDIF output in whatever software you are running. The SPDIF output is not software/PC effected and it is a direct passthrough of the bitstream taken off of the disc.

agreeed - it is the card i use - Let the component Receiver/Processor do the work, not your computer!

YIKES. I just saw the date of the original post. Oh well, hope someone is helped by the following...



Getting both to work glitch free can be a little problematic. The fantastic price to performance ratio of the Chaintech is offset by flakey drivers. In any case, I have found the most stable operation under the 3.10a drivers (found here). You'll need to completely uninstall whatever driver you have been using. Once you have the 3.10a drivers installed, there is a little trick (a fortunate bug, actually) to get autoswitching between 44.1khz music and 48khz DD/DTS to work. This, of course, pertains to the digital output, connected to a digital receiver with DD/DTS decoding.

In VIA control panel:

1. Make sure you're in 2 channel mode ( not Hi sample 2ch )
2. Select 'Digital Out' tab > select 'PCM only' > go to 'Sample rate & Immerzio' tab > uncheck 'Automatic' > select 44.1 from the drop down menu > check 'Automatic' (make sure that Immerzio 3D Gaming support is UNchecked) > go back to 'Digital out' tab and select 'AC3 or PCM with Auto selection' > close VIA Control panel.

Should you also want to get "bit-perfect" music output (bypassing the dreaded kmixer, essentially creating a pure digital pass-through of all music, including DTS tracks), I would suggest using Foobar2000 as your player software. You'll need to download and install the Kernel Streaming component. Select kernel streaming in the playback/output section of Foobar's preferences, make sure you don't have any DSPs activated (not even volume control), and select '24bit fixed-point padded to 32bit' (Playback tab).

Final notes: For whatever reason, standard windows sounds (beeps and whatnot) temporarily break Kernel Streaming. Completely turn off Windows sounds in your control panel to avoid this. And though the above setup works for me 99% of the time, the Chaintech occasionally has a brainfart and fails to autoswitch. In that case, simply hit "stop" and then "play" again in your playback software.

Hope that helps.