I am looking for a way to drive my PC speakers, a stereo through optical,
and a stereo through RCA from my PC simultaneously. Is there a sound card,
internal or external, that can do this? Will I need to run multiple sound
cards? Any advice?

Try the Mystique HBA Bluegear (bluegears.com)

Optical output to your receivers, DTS/Dolby Digital Encoder (your receiver
must be
able to decode the DTS/Dolby D input)

Connecting DVD rom to the Mystique HBA by SPIF Digital input, no downstream
mixing
configured so let the card encoding and output to your receivers.

Specially you must have the DVD encoder software support DTS/Dolby encoding

I watched some DVD with DTS/Dolby, it's perfection, one of a kind that Sound
Blaster does
not have it in their product line :-)

J.H

"Robin" <robinandtami@hotmail.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:TPU6f.471383$_o.47908@attbi_s71...
> I am looking for a way to drive my PC speakers, a stereo through optical,
> and a stereo through RCA from my PC simultaneously. Is there a sound
card,
> internal or external, that can do this? Will I need to run multiple sound
> cards? Any advice?
>
>

i second the X Mystique choice.
The main issue for me was the fact that MP3 is 2 channel, not 2.1, meaning
there is no LF signal if you employ a subwoofer. Other cards or the on board
audio will offer an option to downmix the LF to the front channel, which is
like a virtual sub.

This card will encode any sound from the PC into Dolby Digital Live, via
onboard hardware encoding, upto 7.1, saving the CPU from the resource
intensive task of sofware encoding. You can also trim the output of each
speaker.
Now I enjoy 5.1 floating in the middle of the room, completely disassociated
from the speakers.

I dont regret a penny of the $90.

"Robin" wrote:

> I am looking for a way to drive my PC speakers, a stereo through optical,
> and a stereo through RCA from my PC simultaneously. Is there a sound card,
> internal or external, that can do this? Will I need to run multiple sound
> cards? Any advice?
>
>
>

I just went through an attempt to do this. In my case I wanted the SPDIF to
drive a receiver and the analog to drive my desktop speakers or earphones.
The following is the question and reply to/from NVidia.
------------------------------------------------------
Customer (Michael Mendelsohn) 02/02/2006 10:00 AM
I normally have my system connected to both a receiver via SPDIF and to
earphones via the stereo out. I can listen to music through the stereo or
turn it off and listen with earphones.

If I am watching a DVD with either MCE or WMP, I only get one output at a
time. I have to open the DVD Decoder and switch between receiver/spdif and
headphones on the audio tab.

Is there a setting that would permit both outputs to be active
simultaneously. Unfortunately, my stereo receiver does not have an output I
could use for earphones, since that would solve the problem.
--------------------------------------------------
Response (tw) 02/03/2006 10:42 AM
Hello,

The NVIDIA Decoder does not have the capability to output both S/PDIF pass
through and 2-channel analog at the same time.

Best regards,
NVIDIA Customer Care
-------------------------------------------

Hope this helps, or at least saves you a couple of hours of tail chasing.

Mike



"Robin" wrote: