Overview of HTPC Audio and Surround Sound

May 8th, 2008 by Kevin

Sound is a crucial aspect of any home theater system. Home theater computers have the potential to be an excellent audio source though hardware and codec issues still exist, hampering the overall experience to this point.

Missing Remote has a good overview of home theater sound for you HTPC. It is definitely worth the read and explains the issues surrounding the HTPC. Basically, the latest lossless codecs, like Dolby’s TrueHD, used in Blu-ray are not currently available to media center computers. This should be changing in the not too distant future though. I think two recent developments show that the perfect audio set-up for HTPC is near:

PowerDVD now supports Dolby TrueHD - While hardware does not exist to take care of this feature, Cyberlink has added it anyway. This should bode well for future ovfferings from Asus or Auzentech.
Auzentech is scheduled to release an HDMI extension board to support HDMI 1.3a and Dolby TrueHD. This will allow a single pass-through for both audio and video and will provide the hardware support for Cyberlink and Dolby TrueHD.

There should be big changes this summer in store for your HTPC’s ability to play the latest audio standards from Dolby.

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