5.1 Surround setup (1 Viewer)

eetaylog

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March 6, 2007
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what do people have as their surround sound setup? i have a 7.1 sound card installed in my media centre but havent made the most of it yet as im still only running 2 channels.

do i need to run the sound card output through an amp, and then into the speakers, or are sound cards usually powerful enough to run speakers directly?

cheers for the help.

:D
 

Mew

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January 11, 2007
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Hi eetaylog

I wouldn't think that most soundcards have any level of amplification above that required to drive headphones.

I plan to use the surround outputs on my HTPC once I work out how to route the cables (without upsetting the wife). I previously did this using my DVD player at my old house until I had a new carpet and the fitters refused to lay the carpet with flat speaker cables underneath.

I have a fairly old Yamaha E492 processor which has line-ins for front, back, centre and subwoofer speakers. It drives the centre and rear speakers and has line-outs for the front pair (that went to the aux in on my Hi-Fi stereo amp) and subwoofer. Even though I didn't have a subwoofer I because it was using "proper" speakers (2 floor standing, 2 stand mounted and a centre Mordaunt Short speakers) the sound was great which is why I would like to get this set up again. Hopefully my HTPC and MediaPortal will be just as good.

Mew
 

eetaylog

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cheers for the reply Mew,

so you ran your HTPC sound card output channels through an amp, and then ran your speakers from that?
 

Mew

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No, I haven't yet but it is effectively what I plan to do.

It was a Sony DVD player I used in the past which had 6 line outs (2 front, 2 rear, centre and subwoofer). The DVD player did the Dolby Digital decoding onboard an fed the resulting split signals out. The priciple should be the same with a soundcard as it has already done the decoding if you are taking an analogue feed. If I had a digital external processor I could have taken a single coaxial or optical feed from the DVD player (also avaliable on my motherboard's built in soundcard) and used that.

So 3 of the stereo 3.5 mm line outs on the sound card will split to 6 phono plugs that will plug into the Yamaha E492. Because this only has amplification for the centre and rear speakers I have to use the Kenwood for the front 2 channels. If I had a subwoofer it would need to be active (i.e. have its own amplification) and take a phono feed from the Yamaha E492.

A home cinema type amplifier/receiver will normally be able to power all speakers (except maybe the subwoofer) so you only need the one box rather than the Amp/Processor combination I used. Most can probably use the digital feed which should give a better sound as the decoders will be better quality than those on a built in soundcard.

Mew
 

joho500

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June 3, 2007
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Hi eetaylog,

The best way IMHO is to use the digital out (SPDIF; coaxial or optical) of your soundcard to connect to your home cinema amplifier. The quality of your soundcard isn't even close to that of an amplifier. Than use AC3filter as codec for DVD and Movies. It's able to passthrough SPDIF so the AC3 or DTS stream can be decoded by your amplifier. Beware though, with some soundchips (e.g. onboard Soundmax) you need to replace the default audio renderer with one that supports Wave Out. You can use ReClock renderer for that.

It took me a couple of days surfing on the net and changing my setup to find this out and get it working.
Hope this helps you a bit.


Joost
 

tangmonster

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February 1, 2007
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The possiblities are endless.

I use the analogue outs on my onboard sound card currently. I have built my own 5 channel amplifier.
Currently modding a pci sound card (biggest problem with sound cards are the cheap bad quality capacitors they use on the cards)

My amps don't even have a volume control , the pc is the volume control.

Still have to build my .1 subwoofer amplifier,and the speakers are on the way.

I am a FIRM believer that stereo music should be played over stereo speakers or at most 2.1.
I am trying to fisnd a software solution so that movies will go over 5.1 ,but music will only upmix to 2.1.

tang
 

eetaylog

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March 6, 2007
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thanks for the replies guys.

only problem with my current sound setup is that the amp im using was part of my old dvd player setup, so the cable running from the sound card to the amp/sub is a custom made (as the dvd player audio out socket was a weird shape) so wont fit any of the sound card outputs.

im currently using the phono to jack connection to run 2 channel sound but if i want to use the 5.1 surround, im going to have to make up my own cable, and hence figure out all the pinouts!
 

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