I have been spending all my free time of the last week to find me an answer I can actualy work with about a technical aspect of my Alienware M17x R4 and it realy seems hard to come by
I have an Alienware M17x R4 and if I go to my device manager I see as sound devices the following:
- Nvidia High Definition Audio
- Nvidia Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)
- Sound Blaster Recon3Di
I guess this last one, the Sound Blaster Recon3Di is actualy the one controlling the sound to me laptop speakers and also the one controlling the 3.5mm jacks on the side of the laptop?
My Logitech G930 broke and I am looking into other options to replace this broken headset with. Because I am a gamer I immediatly thought of gaming headsets and prefferably wireless and surround. In this quest I stumbled upon the Astro A50 Gen 2 (Virtual Surround) and support told me it requires a soundcard capable of Dolby Digital Live. The Razer Tiamat 7.1 isn't wireless but it offers a true or discrete surround experience because it has 5 drivers in each earcup instead of the Astros just being stereo headphones emulating surround. In the case of the Razer Tiamat I still haven't got a reply back to what this set needs as incoming signal.
Since my M17x R4 has one 3.5mm optical jack (S/P Dif) I guess the Sound Blaster Recon 3Di offers some sort of digital encoding but what exactly does it support and what type of signal can it send through that S/P dif? Guessing isn't enough, it realy bothers me it is realy hard to find information about this. If they all used the same standards it wouldn't be that much of an issue but seeing there are different options on the market I would expect the technical details of these used soundcards to be available somewhere. Certainly because they are being used in a 3000 dollar laptop!