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CREATIVE LABS ZSE
HISTORY and COMMENTS
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HOME THEATER and OPTICAL
Sony and Philips jointly created the digital format for CD in the early 1980s. The S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) circuit carrying PCM was released in 1983 and high-end CD players of the era typically included both an optical and coaxial S/PDIF output. Soon, sending a PCM bitstream from your CD player to an outboard DAC was all the rage in audiophile circles. Dolby Digital surround came out in 1991 and when DVDs appeared in 1997 many players included an optical output to transmit the 5.1 digital channels for home theater. When Blu-Ray players appeared in 2006 and also came with an optical output for the same purpose.
Largely forgotten is that in 2002 Windows XP came in a special version known as the "Media Center Edition". The intent was to make your PC an entertainment hub by playing content stored on its hard drive. Ripped CDs, DVD's, and TV programs could be played back on your TV or PC monitor which spawned the concept of a Home Theater PC (HTPC). Microsoft expanded the Media Center concept by making the program standard in Windows 7 in 2009. This meant that for over a decade a home theater PC filled with A/V content was commonplace. Yet when Windows 10 arrived in 2015 it dropped the Media Center program much to the frustration of the home theater community. This gave the impression that Microsoft had been pressured by the movie studios to stop encouraging home theater libraries. Coincidentally, with smart phones and Ipads using subscription-based streaming the movie studios breathed a sigh of relief. Instead of obsessing about piracy and file-sharing they now had a more secure model. HDMI 1.0 which had appeared in 2002 was quickly promoted because it could support DRM and inhibit piracy, optical did not. So its no accident that HDMI became the new favored cable for home theater as the industry actively steered people away from a HTPC using optical.
Dolby Digital and DTS have always used an algorithm to compress their soundtracks. Yet HDMI lobbyists discourage optical by stating the 5.1 surround it carries is compressed and lossy. The implication is that using an HDMI cable improves the sound quality or moves the data faster. What the lobbyists avoid mentioning is a 5.1 DD/DTS signal remains the same whether it passes through optical or HDMI. DTS streams at 756kbps and Dolby Digital at 640kbps. Sending it through HDMI 2.0 which has huge bandwidth of 18Gbps doesn't improve the sound quality or move the data any faster. The reality is that the six channels of standard DTS/DD 5.1 have always passed perfectly over optical: because they were designed to from the very beginning.
Sony and Philips jointly created the digital format for CD in the early 1980s. The S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) circuit carrying PCM was released in 1983 and high-end CD players of the era typically included both an optical and coaxial S/PDIF output. Soon, sending a PCM bitstream from your CD player to an outboard DAC was all the rage in audiophile circles. Dolby Digital surround came out in 1991 and when DVDs appeared in 1997 many players included an optical output to transmit the 5.1 digital channels for home theater. When Blu-Ray players appeared in 2006 and also came with an optical output for the same purpose.
Largely forgotten is that in 2002 Windows XP came in a special version known as the "Media Center Edition". The intent was to make your PC an entertainment hub by playing content stored on its hard drive. Ripped CDs, DVD's, and TV programs could be played back on your TV or PC monitor which spawned the concept of a Home Theater PC (HTPC). Microsoft expanded the Media Center concept by making the program standard in Windows 7 in 2009. This meant that for over a decade a home theater PC filled with A/V content was commonplace. Yet when Windows 10 arrived in 2015 it dropped the Media Center program much to the frustration of the home theater community. This gave the impression that Microsoft had been pressured by the movie studios to stop encouraging home theater libraries. Coincidentally, with smart phones and Ipads using subscription-based streaming the movie studios breathed a sigh of relief. Instead of obsessing about piracy and file-sharing they now had a more secure model. HDMI 1.0 which had appeared in 2002 was quickly promoted because it could support DRM and inhibit piracy, optical did not. So its no accident that HDMI became the new favored cable for home theater as the industry actively steered people away from a HTPC using optical.
Dolby Digital and DTS have always used an algorithm to compress their soundtracks. Yet HDMI lobbyists discourage optical by stating the 5.1 surround it carries is compressed and lossy. The implication is that using an HDMI cable improves the sound quality or moves the data faster. What the lobbyists avoid mentioning is a 5.1 DD/DTS signal remains the same whether it passes through optical or HDMI. DTS streams at 756kbps and Dolby Digital at 640kbps. Sending it through HDMI 2.0 which has huge bandwidth of 18Gbps doesn't improve the sound quality or move the data any faster. The reality is that the six channels of standard DTS/DD 5.1 have always passed perfectly over optical: because they were designed to from the very beginning.
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I needed a new video card for my old-school HTPC and looked at the Creative Z SE. With a signal-to-noise of 116 dB and "Hi-Res" 24 bit/192khz DAC the card is marketed as a High-performance PCI-e Gaming and Entertainment Sound Card. Yet nowhere is home theater playback mentioned. The only reference is "Advanced Entertainment Audio to provide you with low-latency and high-fidelity audio, even for your recordings!".
For surround, it can output 5.1 discrete channels from the 3.5 mm speaker jacks (Front, Rear, C/Sub) and up to 7.1 virtual surround over headphones. This requires that you install their Creative Command software in Windows. The software then encodes all audio into DD Live or DTS Connect. Important to remember is that these two effects were not designed for home theater but for gaming on PCs. This means if you're a videophile and want to hear 5.1 the way the movie studios intended, using DD Live or DTS Connect is not the best choice. TV and smart phones use another sound format, AAC 5.1, which at a low 256 kbps is considered average. The card has an optical out jack but Creative is vague about its purpose. Can it be used to send a 5.1 bitstream to a robust home theater system? YES. |
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First, go to the ENCODER tab in the Creative Command software and turn it off. Then go to the PLAYBACK section. Go to the DIGITAL tab and set SPDIF-Out as the default. Per Creative "it allows bit-to-bit streaming of up to 24 bit, 96khz PCM data signal without processing". Last, go into Windows and set the default sound device in Windows to SPDIF-Out. The result is PCM 5.1 out of the optical jack on the card just like from a DVD or Blu-ray player. Movies played on my PC using PowerDVD/VLC/MPC-BE correctly display DTS/Dolby Digital in my receiver's display. My surrounds and 7.1 rears play properly including my dual subs. Sound is crystal clear and effects are 360° steerable and correct. In other words the pass-thru works like its supposed to with no apparent licensing issues. Thank you Creative for making this functional. NOTE: the Audio-Quality dropdown in the Digital Tab resamples the bitstream of stereo signals, it does not have an effect on DD/DTS. However, because this card passes a true DTS/DD 5.1 bitstream it raises an issue. Soundcards with Dolby Digital Live/DTS Connect and motherboards with Realtek ALC1200/ALC1220P codecs were used heavily in HTPCs over the last 2 decades. This means that videophiles were likely listening to processed DD Live/DTS Connect 5.1 or pseudo 5.1 instead of the soundtrack the movie studio intended. Think of the years of lost enjoyment(!) |
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CONCLUSION In the 2000s there were contentious lawsuits between and Dolby and Creative over the use of DD decoding on soundcards. It seems from the very beginning the PC world and the Movie Studios have been at odds over consumer-controlled home theater. While DVD & Blu-Ray players were sold with licensed 5.1 optical outputs the soundcard companies struggled to market a soundcard with optical out for "Home Theater Use". I wouldn't be surprised if licensing agreements require a focus on gaming and don't allow the term "home theater" to appear in soundcard advertising. Regardless, DTS and Dolby Digital over optical are benchmarks that continue to provide excellent 7.1 surround even after 20 years. Lossless surround such as Atmos and DTS-HD could easily play over optical if the circuit was redesigned by the industry. But because of the Digital Right Management (DRM) HDMI supports this will never be allowed to happen. Myself? I prefer a HTPC with MPC-BE passing DTS over optical because of its robust performance, rock solid reliability, and lack of handshake issues. The HDMI/Lossless crowd continues to steer people away from optical by using the term "lossy", but don't let those trolls make you neurotic. |
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