6ch audio help...dolby??

[John Prophet]

If a comp says it has 6ch audio does that mean it necessarily mean it has DOLBY 5.1?? Or is dolby 5.1 something different??

For instance I am looking at biostar boards and the M7NCG 400 ultra has a Realtek ALC650 6-Channel AC'97 CODEC and it specifically says it supports Dolby 5.1

The M7VIQ has the CMI9739A 6-Channel CODEC but it doesnt specifically say Dolby anywhere?

I am just wondering if there is a difference or did they just forget to put that in the description etc??

Thanks, JP

[[Neo770]]

I believe that all it means is that it can output 6 analogue channels. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Dolby digital, DTS or a game that supports multi channel audio. As far as I know Nforce2 chipset boards are the only ones that can actualy encode Dolby Digital in real time so you can feed that to an external decoder.