Playing DVD-Audio on a Retro PC in 2023

[ubertrout]

I thought about putting this on an old thread from 2002, but I figured better not to threadjack or revive ancient threads. I've been playing with a little retro PC station, mostly for gaming, and ended up adding DVD-Audio capability to it, and figured I'd share some pics and the like.

Thanks to @gene_stl I set up a Pentium 2 as a Windows 98 Machine for mid/late 90s gaming, and it's great fun - DOS games work without any emulation and look/sound great. I'm using it with a late-gen 17 inch CRT monitor of course. Then I realized I could use an existing Core 2 Duo machine I had in the closet as an XP machine, and decided I wanted to use a Creative Audigy 2 ZS as my soundcard. The actual impetus for using that card is that it can do EAX 4.0 positional audio in games while sounding great. But the card has an extra perk - it can play DVD-Audio discs natively.

The actual experience was extremely cool but slightly underwhelming. My XP box is pretty loud, and the Creative DVD-Audio player software assumes I'm playing 5.1 even though the PC only has stereo - and I didn't see a way to change that. The Classic Records stereo DVD-Audio of Close Encounters played perfectly though.

The card also came with a DVD-Audio sampler of its own, which was pretty cool. I put it in my regular system and it sounded great as far as I could tell. It was clearly meant for a PC in terms of interface, but that just fit the mood more.

A lot of fun, albeit kind of crazy this is now two decades old and firmly in "retro tech" territory. Still need to play with it more.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Wowza...

So the Sound Blaster software is able to decrypt a DVD-Audio discs (CCPM) copy protection and unpack and play the lossless lpcm.mpl audio streams?

Maybe you should get some more speakers for the complete surround sound experience

 

[Scott65]

I thought about putting this on an old thread from 2002, but I figured better not to threadjack or revive ancient threads. I've been playing with a little retro PC station, mostly for gaming, and ended up adding DVD-Audio capability to it, and figured I'd share some pics and the like.

Thanks to @gene_stl I set up a Pentium 2 as a Windows 98 Machine for mid/late 90s gaming, and it's great fun - DOS games work without any emulation and look/sound great. I'm using it with a late-gen 17 inch CRT monitor of course. Then I realized I could use an existing Core 2 Duo machine I had in the closet as an XP machine, and decided I wanted to use a Creative Audigy 2 ZS as my soundcard. The actual impetus for using that card is that it can do EAX 4.0 positional audio in games while sounding great. But the card has an extra perk - it can play DVD-Audio discs natively.

The actual experience was extremely cool but slightly underwhelming. My XP box is pretty loud, and the Creative DVD-Audio player software assumes I'm playing 5.1 even though the PC only has stereo - and I didn't see a way to change that. The Classic Records stereo DVD-Audio of Close Encounters played perfectly though.View attachment 87868

The card also came with a DVD-Audio sampler of its own, which was pretty cool. I put it in my regular system and it sounded great as far as I could tell. It was clearly meant for a PC in terms of interface, but that just fit the mood more.

View attachment 87869

A lot of fun, albeit kind of crazy this is now two decades old and firmly in "retro tech" territory. Still need to play with it more.

I've got that DVD-A disk. It's a great disk! Mine came with a PCMCIA version of the sound blaster.

 

[ubertrout]

Wowza...

So the Sound Blaster software is able to decrypt a DVD-Audio discs (CCPM) copy protection and unpack and play the lossless lpcm.mpl audio streams?

Maybe you should get some more speakers for the complete surround sound experience

I mean, I have a surround setup. I suppose I could get a used Logitech surround setup for (really mediocre sounding) period correct surround on my retro PC, but I think I'll just use the Sony X800 for DVD-Audio.

And yes, it can play the discs - it was a major feature of the card. There's various measures to ensure it's not used for ripping I believe.

 

[ubertrout]

I've got that DVD-A disk. It's a great disk! Mine came with a PCMCIA version of the sound blaster.

It is! I didn't realize the PCMCIA version could do it too. Kind of want one now...

 

[mandrix]

I thought about putting this on an old thread from 2002, but I figured better not to threadjack or revive ancient threads. I've been playing with a little retro PC station, mostly for gaming, and ended up adding DVD-Audio capability to it, and figured I'd share some pics and the like.

Thanks to @gene_stl I set up a Pentium 2 as a Windows 98 Machine for mid/late 90s gaming, and it's great fun - DOS games work without any emulation and look/sound great. I'm using it with a late-gen 17 inch CRT monitor of course. Then I realized I could use an existing Core 2 Duo machine I had in the closet as an XP machine, and decided I wanted to use a Creative Audigy 2 ZS as my soundcard. The actual impetus for using that card is that it can do EAX 4.0 positional audio in games while sounding great. But the card has an extra perk - it can play DVD-Audio discs natively.

The actual experience was extremely cool but slightly underwhelming. My XP box is pretty loud, and the Creative DVD-Audio player software assumes I'm playing 5.1 even though the PC only has stereo - and I didn't see a way to change that. The Classic Records stereo DVD-Audio of Close Encounters played perfectly though.View attachment 87868

The card also came with a DVD-Audio sampler of its own, which was pretty cool. I put it in my regular system and it sounded great as far as I could tell. It was clearly meant for a PC in terms of interface, but that just fit the mood more.

View attachment 87869

A lot of fun, albeit kind of crazy this is now two decades old and firmly in "retro tech" territory. Still need to play with it more.

I still have two Audigy 2 ZS (SB0 350) cards boxed up. Probably got the software somewhere around here and original discs. I think you can still get the cards to work with modern Windows and the DVDA player if you use Daniel K's hacked drivers. Haven't tried them in a few years, though. Seems like they were still working on early Windows 10 at least, although not for all of the original software.
Back in the day I really loved my Audigy 2 ZS cards. Seems like I used to capture the mch sound in Nero 7 or 8 and futz around with it in it's mch mixer. Was a lot of fun.

I've thought a few times about pulling them out and trying them just for fun, but I'm just not set up for analog audio anymore, although I still have an analog in AVR I use for my side surrounds in my Atmos system.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

For those of us who don't have tower PC's, I wonder if there's an external device/black box that would allow us to plug in old PCI and/or PCIe cards. So we can experiment with our old gear...

 

[mandrix]

For those of us who don't have tower PC's, I wonder if there's an external device/black box that would allow us to plug in old PCI and/or PCIe cards. So we can experiment with our old gear...

If you have Thunderbolt it should be easy, if pricy,
You don't have a spare Pcie slot on a pc I'm guessing? Standard ATX motherboard should have several slots.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

If you have Thunderbolt it should be easy, if pricy,
You don't have a spare Pcie slot on a pc I'm guessing? Standard ATX motherboard should have several slots.

Nope... I currently have a Dell laptop with three USB-A ports. I recently had to remove it's slim Blu-ray disc drive after it failed, so maybe something could be attached to the SATA port... But it's a slightly different design

 

[ubertrout]

Nope... I currently have a Dell laptop with three USB-A ports. I recently had to remove it's slim Blu-ray disc drive after it failed, so maybe something could be attached to the SATA port... But it's a slightly different design

You'll need a desktop (or old laptop with a PCMCIA slot) to run this old hardware. You can probably get a used Core 2 (or even an early i3/i5/i7) desktop with a PCI slot incredibly cheap though if you want to play with this stuff yet. Any old office machine will do, but it will need to be full-size, not a slim/small form factor chassis. This hardware isn't quite old enough to become retro, although it's getting close. Suspect will be a lot harder in 5 years.

Just as an example (from the US, but shouldn't be that different), this is under $50 shipped: Lenovo ThinkCentre Desktop Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz 4GB RAM NO HDD NO OS | eBay. You'll probably spend another $20 for a SSD to use as a hard drive. If you pay a little more (but still under $100) you can get a complete PC (including monitor) of this era: Dell OptiPlex Desktop Computer Core 2 Duo Tower 4GB WIFI 19in LCD Windows 10 PC | eBay

The Audigy 2 ZS still sells for $20 or so, but make sure you're getting the retail and not Dell/OEM version. This is the right one: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS SB0350 Sound Card | eBay

 

[mandrix]

Yeah, I mean, if you were close to me I'd give you a mini-itx Z68 motherboard w/i3 cpu and DRAM. Hell probably a case even and old gpu card. Still works.

I mean they make outboard stuff for laptops for gpu's but I don't know much about laptop hardware period.

I wish shipping was not so expensive these days.

 

[ubertrout]

I still have two Audigy 2 ZS (SB0 350) cards boxed up. Probably got the software somewhere around here and original discs. I think you can still get the cards to work with modern Windows and the DVDA player if you use Daniel K's hacked drivers. Haven't tried them in a few years, though. Seems like they were still working on early Windows 10 at least, although not for all of the original software.
Back in the day I really loved my Audigy 2 ZS cards. Seems like I used to capture the mch sound in Nero 7 or 8 and futz around with it in it's mch mixer. Was a lot of fun.

I've thought a few times about pulling them out and trying them just for fun, but I'm just not set up for analog audio anymore, although I still have an analog in AVR I use for my side surrounds in my Atmos system.

I've heard about the DVD-A player working on modern PCs too, although for me part of the charm is running on WinXP 32-bit exactly how it was designed to work. For most listening I'm just using my Sony X800.

 

[mandrix]

Nope... I currently have a Dell laptop with three USB-A ports. I recently had to remove it's slim Blu-ray disc drive after it failed, so maybe something could be attached to the SATA port... But it's a slightly different design

I don't think it's worth it because of shipping costs, but that motherboard I said I have above: with box, minus shipping packaging whatever that comes to is 2.35 lbs. If you want to pay shipping I'll give it to you. I'm in Florida, US.
I think they're PCI slots, not Pcie. Been a while, it's been my wife's machine for a while.

 

[Scott65]

This thread has inspired me to get my Pentium 3 from 1999 up and running again.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Oh wow...

 

[ubertrout]

This thread has inspired me to get my Pentium 3 from 1999 up and running again.

Machines of that era are a lot of fun. I put a IDE-CF adapter in the one I got so it has SSD speed and I can in theory swap out different CF cards to boot different OSes like 95 or 2k. The 98 box I got has a built-in Yamaha YMF724 sound chip which does Adlib natively and wavetable is great in Win98. Lots of fun on mid/late 90s games.

 

[mandrix]

oof.