Dolby Surround support for WC3 and KS

K

Karthik@KANE

Spaceman
I'm curious, was there ever Dolby Surround support for the DOS version of WC3? And what about Kilrathi Saga? If I wanted Dolby Support do I need a 5.1 speaker setup?
 
Wing Commander is a bit older than Dolby Digital (5.1). If you're putting together a WC machine, the *only* reason to buy a 5.1 system is to play the Wing Commander movie DVD (which has a 5.1 audio track). You'll need both a 5.1 reciever and a sound card that specifically has a 5.1 output jack (I don't remember what they're called - optical, maybe?).

What various Wing Commander games support is the previous standard, Dolby Pro-Logic ("Surround Sound"). A Pro-Logic recieved takes information from a standard stereo line (so, from your current sound card) and then passes it to several speaker channels (right, left, center and rear, IIRC).

For either setup what you'll need is a reciever and a mess of speakers (plus possibly a newer soundcard for the 5.1 setup). If you go whole hog and get a 5.1 setup, it'll be backwards compatible and you won't need to worry about anything.

I *believe* that every Wing Commander title from Wing Commander III 3DO on supported Dolby Pro-Logic to some extent - including Kilrathi Saga.
 
I know Wing Commander 4 did. Best example of the surround sound feel is the intro. When fighters fly past your screen or from behind.
 
A friendly warning to LOAF and other interested parties:
NO soundcard up to date does 5.1 over the digital output *.

You can only get 5.1 over the analogue 5.1 ones. 5.1 over digital will only work for 5.1 pre-encoded datastreams (like when watching DVD movies). It does NOT work for pc games. You will only get stereo in that case. No soundcard so far has realtime 5.1 encoding.

So for WC4 DVD I'd expect that the game is stereo (or Pro-Logic respectively) and the movies should be 5.1 over the digital out connector

(*) One exception seems to exist - Nvidia Soundstorm based onboard sound.
 
I don't know of any games that do 5.1 sound, anyway.

The WC4 DVD is pro-logic all around, IIRC - there's no 5.1 track.
 
I think Battlefield 1942 comes very close. Most games, nearly all, will do 4.1. However with speakers such as the Logitech Z640s there is a feature on the centre speaker that will emulate 5.1 sound. It's an awesome little feature.
 
Well whatever. In any case you will only get 2.0 stereo on the digital out and not whatever would be possible (and what is available on the analogue ones) with the exception of prerecorded DVD sound.
 
Actually, that's what the NForce motherboards with the Dolby Digital encoders are for. They're to allow 5.1 output via the digital output, from a 3D sound source. Of course, how many programs use it, I don't know. But they're designed for that purpose.

To do this, requires a license - that's why the NForce motherboards with those encoders cost more than the ones that don't. Unfortunately, none of them do DTS encoding.
 
Only the Nforce motherboards with the SOUNDSTORM soundchip do. Which are very few. Also only works with the NForce2 I think, not Nforce3. And the Soundstorm most certainly isn't on par with higher end soundcards in speed or quality otherwise.
 
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