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Hooking up Receiver to Audigy2 sound card for 5.1

L

LehighBri

Member
I currently have a PC with a Audigy2 sound card and a 5.1 onkyo stereo receiver which I'd like to hook to. The Audigy2 has front out, rear out, and subwoofer out connections, but the receiver looks like it only has a L and R (white and red) audio in connections. Is there any way to send all 3 of the audigy signals to the receiver, or is there another way to hook it up so that I can play 5.1 sound out of the receiver?

Thanks!
 
Unless your receiver has a 6 Channel Input, there's no way of doing it, I'm afraid. Most receivers are designed with reproducing Dolby Digital/ProLogic in mind (As far as surround sound goes) and so have no facility to connect multi-channel sound cards.
 
What sort of 5.1 sound do you want to send to the receiver? If its Dolby Digital/DTS then all you need is a 1/8" minijack to 2 RCA cable. However, if you want positional game audio, then you will need a receiver with multichannel analog inputs.
 
I'm actually going for 5 channel music for now, so positional gaming would be last on my list. I'll probably send the digital signal to the receiver via spdif to coax ro smeothing like that and hopefully it'll bring out the sound i'm looking for.

thanks for the help!
 
I thought you didn't need a receiver to run 5.1/positional audio on a audigy? Or am I thinking of audigy 2?
 
If you get speakers like Klipsch promedia's you don't need receiver. They hook right into the sound card.

I'm still looking for positional audio somehow, but it's looking like that's not possible with my receiver anymore
 
if you use spdif for music, you will only get 2.1
only a 5.1 analog input can achieve 5.1 music.
 
Edit: I have a Audigy 2 sound card and the specs say:
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 On-Board Connectors
Digital Out for 5.1 support (6-channel SPDIF Output)

Would this connection above work for 5.1 if i get a SPDIF to coax connector?

or

Would it help if I bought the breakout box (platinum) so that I can use the optical or coaxial digital connections out? My receiver has both optical and coaxial digital in

Then would I have 5.1 sound for music?

Thanks!
 
Originally posted by: LehighBri
Edit: I have a Audigy 2 sound card and the specs say:
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 On-Board Connectors
Digital Out for 5.1 support (6-channel SPDIF Output)

Would this connection above work for 5.1 if i get a SPDIF to coax connector?

or

Would it help if I bought the breakout box (platinum) so that I can use the optical or coaxial digital connections out? My receiver has both optical and coaxial digital in

Then would I have 5.1 sound for music?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Not sure about the Audigy 2, but with my Live 5.1, even with the coax and optical outputs, you still won't get true AC3 coding out from it for your receiver.

 
You can use the miniplug to coax rca adapter from the spdif digital out to get 5.1 sound. You just have to select spdif passthrough in your creative audigy2 settings. Your receiver will do the decoding for any digital source code, as others have said. Analog sources will be played in whatever format they are coded in, whether it is 2.1, Pro Logic, Surround, etc.

If you want 5.1 cd sound, I'm pretty sure you can unselect spdif passthrough and tweak for 5.1 sound in the media software. Whatever the Audigy2 does to create 5.1 sound from a CD is then passed on to your receiver. I need to double-check this, as I think I'm getting 5.1 sound from music CD's even though I always have passthrough selected. (I know for a fact I'm getting 3.1 sound from center, R,L and LFE).

Chiz

Edit: About your original inquiry about using the 3 outputs. You can only do this if you have 5.1 channel input on your receiver. My receiver has it, but I don't recommend it. Not only is it expensive (3 x miniplug to RCA adapters), but your receiver won't be doing the decoding. It'll essentially be emulated DD as each mini-out sends a signal that then goes to 2 channels (its like 3x Dolby Pro Logic). Its much cheaper (and you get true 5.1 sound) to use the spdif optical out and the coax in on your receiver.
 
I've asked the question whether to go with 5.1 analog input or optical out before in Creative's newsgroup, and Harvey Wong from Creative Labs answered my question.
He said if you use the spdif or coax out for music, since it's stereo, it will only give 2.1 out. But if you use 5.1 analog input, you can have 5 speakers play the same thing at the same time or use the CMSS feature from playcenter to upmix the music. Optical out is only best for DVD so you can use your receiver to do DTS decode. 5.1 analog input is also great for playing games.
 
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