I had been looking for doing some surround sound but bupmed into so many question!!
I have VGN-AR51J machine which has a SPDIF optical out and an Sigmatel High defination audio codec. I have the following questions which i think some of you might already have addressed.
1.) I cound not find the capabilities of this onborad sound card (Sigmatel High defination) any where on the internet. Is it able to encode 7.1 channel thru SPDIF optical out? I believe it can encode 5.1 channel into 2 channel digital format (for Optical SPDIF) which can be decoded by any external decoder, but again I am not sure, any comments/help will be appreciated. If it does not spit out 7.1 then i will not consider wasting money on 7.1 and will go for 5.1.
2.) Is the sound quality good enough when we use optical SPDIF out? Again it will depend on the external decoder and the speaker system but conidering a good set of those. If quality is not good then I will go for some creative PCIexpress sound cards.
3.) Last, is there any speaker system available (preferably 5.1 or 7.1 if point 1 is satified) that has an in-build decoder and an optical SPDIF-in? Budget £250.
I have spent hours to seek answers for these question online but couldnt find any solutions. So i thought of asking you guys since many of you have already solved/faced this issue.
Thanks so much for your help.
Amit
