seriousfun
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SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
This could be the inexpensive solution many are looking for to use an existing home theater system to monitor surround mixes done in Sonar. Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610 Source: Creative Technology Ltd.
Aug 2, 2005, 08:50
The Only External Consumer Hardware Encoding Device that Enables Analog Transfer of Any Audio and DRM Content from the PC to the Digital Connection of a Home Entertainment Center
MILPITAS, Calif., Aug. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Creative Technology Ltd. (NASDAQ:CREAF) , a worldwide leader in digital entertainment solutions for PC users and the creator of Sound Blaster(R), today announced a breakthrough in the convergence of the PC and the home entertainment center. The Home Theater Connect DTS-610, a standalone, self-powered encoder that easily connects a media center or standard PC to a multichannel consumer electronics receiver. With this simple digital connection, all audio from the PC, including multichannel and DRM-protected content, can be played back on a surround-sound home theater system. The Home Theater Connect DTS-610 will be available in September for US$99.99.
"Media center PCs are quickly becoming a necessary part of home theater systems, because of their ability to store and playback all types of content, including CDs, MP3s, DVDs, and downloaded movies. However, their limitations in handling DRM-protected content have kept media center PCs from blending seamlessly with the other components," said Steve Erickson, vice president of audio for Creative. "The Home Theater Connect DTS-610 removes these limitations and allows real-time DTS Interactive encoding of all audio content. DTS is widely regarded by audio aficionados to be the premium sound solution for home theaters, and we are excited to release the first product on the market with the new DTS Interactive encoding process."
DRM-protected content played on a PC, such as purchased MP3 files and DVD-Audio disks, require that the PC's digital audio output connector be shut off, thereby protecting the content from being copied. However, owners of the content who simply wanted to send the files to a multi-channel receiver for enjoyment on a home theater system were prevented from doing so because of this limitation. With the Home Theater Connect DTS-610, users are now able send the content through their Sound Blaster sound card's analog outputs and have it encoded in real time with DTS Interactive and digitally output to their home theater system.
The Home Theater Connect DTS-610 is the first stand-alone hardware product on the market to use the new DTS Interactive, a special real-time version of DTS encoding that offers the very best balance between performance and quality. With the Home Theater Connect DTS-610, all audio content, be it music, movies or PC games, can be encoded with the superior DTS Interactive technology.
"DTS is proud to once again announce an audio first with Creative, a long time DTS partner," said Brian Towne, senior vice president consumer/pro division at DTS. "Like DTS, Creative is known for adding exceptional consumer value and DTS is honored to bring yet another use of DTS technologies to market in partnership with such an outstanding company."
A previous solution for connecting a PC to a home theater system was to run an individual analog cable between the two for each stereo channel. In a 7.1 setup, that meant running 8 individual lines. Besides being cumbersome, that solution also tended to yield inconsistent results with regard to bass management. The Home Theater Connect DTS-610 requires only one thin cable to be run between the unit and the stereo receiver, even for multi-channel playback, with consistent playback every time.
Pricing and Availability
The Home Theater Connect DTS-610 will be available at http://us.creative.com/ in September, for an estimated street price of US$99.99. For more information about the Home Theater Connect DTS-610, visit http://www.soundblaster.com/ .
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mewsicknerd
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/02 19:27:39
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 Maybe I'm missing something. You have digital content on your PC, then you have to send this content out on the Soundblaster analog outputs {no comment} then it goes through this new device which converts it back to digital, and then through your digital home sound system. What is the point? The DtoA should only be done once on the surround sound system. This gadget seems like a "fix" that enables the user to connect things, but the user looses the whole point in the first place, the fidelity. The price seems fine.
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stephenlnoe
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/02 19:42:41
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Uhhhh.... Surround mixing has everything to do with sound placement in the sound field. You'd have already accomplished fidelity before you'd ever start placing audio in the matrix. If this is a way to allow encoding of AC-3 on the fly then it is a great solution for all the home decoders out there. Otherwise you must have at least 6 discrete channels to monitor a 5.1 surround mix. It's not a bad idea.
We all need more cow bell
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seriousfun
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/02 23:27:10
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DTS encoding/decoding, especially on-the-fly in a $99 box, is not boing to be as good as their $6,000 box. But, when S4 was released, there was a ton of discussion on here about how to monitor your surround mixes. Many people had a surround speaker system connected to a home theater receiver, and this is the way to get the six channels of audio directly into the home theater system without encoding and streaming or burning a CD or DVD. The encoding and authoring software is very expensive (the DiskWelder software included in S4 is great, but the discs can only be played on DVD-A players, and these are not common).
If you want to monitor directly, you can run six audio cables to your home theater system - if it has appropriate inputs. Or do as I do, and set up a 5.1 system with your recording system.
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mewsicknerd
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/04 16:32:03
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I'm not understanding what this device does.
Without the device, you have eight single channel cables from your PC to you 7.1 sound system. With this device, you have eight single channel cables from the analog outputs of your sound card to this new device, and then one cable from the device to your sound system.
What is the advantage?
I understand encoding the multiple channels is valuable. But with this device,
You are encoding on the fly, by you can't "save" the encoding to disk, only view it?
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seriousfun
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/04 19:05:54
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ORIGINAL: mewsicknerd
...
Without the device, you have eight single channel cables from your PC to you 7.1 sound system. With this device, you have eight single channel cables from the analog outputs of your sound card to this new device, and then one cable from the device to your sound system.
... You got it. The advantage is one cable over six. Digital - SPDIF - with no loss vs. analog cables with whatever loss. The use of your existing home theater system as opposed to adding three more speakers, bass management, a monitor controller, etc. (BTW, I don't sell these Creative/DTS things, this isn't spam...). Search this forum - when SPE4 came out, there must have been a dozen topics that started "I connected the digital output of my soundcard to the digital input of my receiver, and I'm only getting the right and left channels. How can I monitor surround from Sonar..." And none of the answers were simple or cheap (buy DiskWelder and a DVD-A player, or buy an expensive software encoder and play that file through your digital out). This little device may be the ticket for someone who wants to listen to their mixes through an existing home theater setup.
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jayson
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/04 23:40:27
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I wonder if the HDA X-Mystique 7.1 Gold distributed by BlueGears is another option. From what I've read, it does real time DD 5.1 (not DTS like the Creative product) but am not sure if it could work with Sonar 4 as there is no mention of WDM or ASIO drivers on the site. Anyone try it? Cheers, jayson
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seriousfun
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/04 23:59:05
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ORIGINAL: jayson
I wonder if the HDA X-Mystique 7.1 Gold distributed by BlueGears is another option. From what I've read, it does real time DD 5.1 (not DTS like the Creative product) but am not sure if it could work with Sonar 4 as there is no mention of WDM or ASIO drivers on the site. Anyone try it?
Cheers,
jayson
Good catch, Jayson. I have been eyeing this for a while, and even asking people at Dolby if they know anything about it. AFAIK it is the first device using Dolby Digital Live, the equivalent (and predecessor) to the DTS live encoder. Only this is a PCI card and doesn't need the analog outs. The owners manual for this mentions WDM drivers, and the driver download page mentions a display bug with ASIO4All, implying that this otherwise works with ASIO4ALL. And, there is a 64-bit driver shown! I have yet to find anyone but a few gamers talking about this card on the web, and I would be worried about it peacefully coexisting with my RME MultiFace.
post edited by seriousfun - 2005/08/05 00:04:29
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Keni
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/06 13:01:01
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It's the difference in the method of connection...
Home theatre stuff only sees dolby/dts surround stuff thru it's digital connection... So for converting from the audio output to the digital to use such a device was/is the issue.
If you simply use multiple audio outputs wored to multiple analog amps... there is no problem or need....
Keni
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seriousfun
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/06 14:03:12
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Yes, but, again, many people here were frustrated that they couldn't just connect the digital output of their computer soundcard to the digital input of their home theater and get all channels. These Dolby and DTS technologies are the hope.
Most HT receivers unfortunately don't have the six RCA inputs necessary for a direct analog connection.
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mewsicknerd
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/08 13:49:22
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Hi Doug. ORIGINAL: seriousfun
ORIGINAL: mewsicknerd
...
Without the device, you have eight single channel cables from your PC to you 7.1 sound system. With this device, you have eight single channel cables from the analog outputs of your sound card to this new device, and then one cable from the device to your sound system.
...
You got it.
The advantage is one cable over six. Digital - SPDIF - with no loss vs. analog cables with whatever loss. The use of your existing home theater system as opposed to adding three more speakers, bass management, a monitor controller, etc. (BTW, I don't sell these Creative/DTS things, this isn't spam...).
Search this forum - when SPE4 came out, there must have been a dozen topics that started "I connected the digital output of my soundcard to the digital input of my receiver, and I'm only getting the right and left channels. How can I monitor surround from Sonar..." And none of the answers were simple or cheap (buy DiskWelder and a DVD-A player, or buy an expensive software encoder and play that file through your digital out). This little device may be the ticket for someone who wants to listen to their mixes through an existing home theater setup.
What is the difference if you plug in the cables to this little black box, or into the sound system? Also, this little black box forces you to first have a D/A converstion then back to A/D. So you have conversion loss which is much worse than transmission loss which IMHO is usually unmeasurable.
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seriousfun
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/08 14:12:55
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ORIGINAL: mewsicknerd
What is the difference if you plug in the cables to this little black box, or into the sound system? Also, this little black box forces you to first have a D/A converstion then back to A/D. So you have conversion loss which is much worse than transmission loss which IMHO is usually unmeasurable.
Most home systems do not have the required six RCA preamp inputs.
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mewsicknerd
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/17 13:04:57
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Yeah, I understand that it has surround sound - DTS decoding. But why would you want to first use the cr@ppy analog outs of a Cre@tive consumer card and then convert to digital. The A/D process is the key to the A/D - D/A chain. Why not just get the M-Audio box which uses USB - all digital - out of your PC for about the same price? http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/SonicaTheater-focus.html
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Arman
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RE: SURROUND - Creative and DTS Announce the Home Theater Connect DTS-610
2005/08/17 19:42:53
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That m-audio device does not encode multichannel on the fly. I think most of the posters here are missing the point.
This new device appears to be the first device of its kind that offers DTS encoding on the fly. Now most people can use it to send a siganl to their AVR. If you do not have 6 analog ins on your AVR then you CAN'T mix in surround - period. Most people don't have a multichannel input on their AVR. This solves that proble. maybe.
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