Hooking up an Audigy 2 Zs to a HT Receiver for boosted sound.

[Asparagus]

My goal is to Hook an Audigy 2 Zs to my Surround Sound receiver to distribute some "big sound" through some infinity speakers/sub...

Is this possible. Do I just port a sound signal out of the 2 Zs and into the back of my receiver? The receiver was a fairly high end Kenwood from about 8 years ago...

Anyone tried this?

 

[Todd33]

Use optical or coax if the ZS has it, otherwise you have to split the mini-RCA into Red/White composite (yuck).

I run optical out of my NFS-7 HTPC into my DA4ES, very nice 6.1 setup.

 

[eastvillager]

Actually, you probably want to hook up both sets of inputs/outputs, if you can.

Digital won't do you much good with stuff like doom3 that doesn't even use dd/dts, etc.

Use digital coax(or optical) to run dd/dts to your receiver, and run the discrete analog outs for each channel as well, if your receiver will take it.

I have a denon 4802, which I wished had multiple sets of discrete analog 7.1 inputs. Right now, those inputs are taken up by a denon dvd-2900, and I have to use the analog outputs for SACD.

If all you do is game on the pc(no dvd watching), just go with the analog outs.

 

[Todd33]

Huh? The one optical out should provide all sound, 5.1 or 2.0, it does on my setup. Is there some limitation to the Audigy? Funky.

 

[Caveman]

Even though it is a surround receiver, I don't have any rear surrounds hooked up... Although I'd like the capability to use the 2 fronts, center and 2 rears, I'm mainly interested in getting my computer to be able to output sound during games through my current setup which is just 2 fronts, a center, and a sub...

 

[beatle]

It's not so much the limitation of the Audigy, it's just the advancement of the Soundstorm sound on the NF7-S. Soundstorm can upmix 2 channel audio into 5.1 and then encode it into Dolby Digital before sending it to the optical output. Any other soundcard, onboard or card based, doesn't have this feature. Most support AC3 (Dolby Digital) passthrough or native 2 channel output, but unless you're playing a DVD with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, you won't get 5.1 channels out of your digital output.

I suggest running 6 channel discrete analog to the receiver. You'll get everything, including DVD-Audio, which you can't get over a digital cable.