Connecting my SB Audigy 2 to 6.1 Home Theatre

[Loofah]

Hey everybody. I've got a question for any audio guys around. You'll have to bear with me, because I'm new to any type of audio outside of my trusty headphones. So, here's the deal. I'm getting a new Onkyo 6.1 home theatre system, and I want to be able to connect my PC to it as well as my dvd and TV and all that. I was planning on buying a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS so I can send a 6.1 signal to the receiver, and get hot hot sound in games and all the like. But, my problem is, it's all just so confusing to someone new to the mutli-channel audio world such as I. Here's some links to some websites that have all the connections for both the receiver and the sound card:

Sound Blaster
Onkyo HT-S760

The only thing I could conclude is that they both have SPDIF, but I noticed that the SB said it only sent 5.1 through the SPDIF output. But I'm not sure if 6.1 is just 5.1 with one of the channels going to an extra speaker or what. Now, what I need from somebody willing to help is to let me know what the best way would be to go about connecting the two, and maybe what types of cables I should purchase. Thanks much in advance!

 

[Dantzig]

Optical SPDIF is what you need.

I just got the same system yesterday and sound comes out of all 6 speakers when playing a 5.1 stream.

 

[Pariah]

If you want surround sound in games, you have to use analog, not SPDIF. For movies and other DD encoded material, the SPDIF will pass as many channels as are in the source, it's not limited to 5.1.

 

[Loofah]

Awesome, thanks for the info. Now, what I'm wondering is, how would I do an analog connection, then? I read somewhere that the Sound Blaster sends the 7.1 over 3 connections (The 3 bottom connectors on the card, the top sends 2 channels, and each of the bottom two send 3 channels). I could be wrong, I dunno. But if this is true, is there some kind of adapter I would need or something?

 

[Pariah]

All you need is one 1/8th male to stereo RCA cables and two 4 pole 1/8th male to triple RCA cables (used commonly with camcorders for stereo audio and RCA video output).

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: Pariah
All you need is one 1/8th male to stereo RCA cables and two 4 pole 1/8th male to triple RCA cables (used commonly with camcorders for stereo audio and RCA video output).

Normally, yes. The receiver in question, however, only supports 5.1 via analog. So you need three sets of 1/8th male to stereo RCA.

The receiver will probably create the rear center out of the other rear speakers, so you won't really miss anything.