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SB Live! 5.1 to Home Theater system questions...

F

fluxcapacitorMB

Member
I have had an SB Live! for along time. I never could get 5.1 out of it to my Kenwood home theater system [using the "live surround" setting], so today I picked up a 5.1 Live! Guess what? I can't get 5.1!!! I have tried every possible configuration [i.e. the various outputs and inputs on the card and ma receiver (vr-407/optical & coax inputs)] and was finally told by the asshole from Creative technical service that I cannot get 5.1 running into my home theater system. Because my receiver does not have a "Digital DIN" input connector. Why o' why didn't creative just use the standard of a coax or optical ouput for 5.1? So, does anyone here have a Live! 5.1 card running into a Home theater receiver via coax or optical AND get 5.1? I can get the 2 fronts, but NOT 5.1. If y'all need more specifics on ma system lemme know. I don't think so though since this is just a question of how to run the bitch to my receiver...:disgust:
 
Hey, sorry bud, but you're out of luck. Creative went the digital DIN route specifically so you would have to buy their speaker solution - no receiver is going to support digital DIN. The good news - Atleast you can watch your DVD's in full 5.1 sound by getting yourself a Hollwood+ (with the digital COAX out) card for $30 off the forums and watch some DTS and DD encoded movies 🙂. Sorry to let you down

Rup
 
Creative sells a daughterboard to address this problem:

Optical I/O

But Rup's right - it sucks when companies do stuff like this. Corporate marketoid types crippling an otherwise outstanding product. The way of the world.

Hopefully, their play will fall flat, and future cards will have standard optical i/o on the board.

cheers until then...
 
phuck that!!! They want $60 for that Goddamn little optical card. I think other Co's make cards w/ coax and optical outs, but then you lose EAX support.
 
Platinum woulndn't solve anything...it's the exact same card. The live drive has optical junk, but I don't think that it outputs the digital AC3 signal...why you ask?

The 5.1 is decoded on-card, the only way to get TRUE 5.1 to a home theater system is to change the digi-out to analog/stereo and it becomes the center channel/sub out. line out 1 and 2 would be fr/fl and rr/rl respectively. That's a whole lot of cable and would require a receiver with 5.1 analog in as well.

Besides...why pay another $80 for a gimmick.

if you can...try to return that thing or sell it off and take a look at the philips acoustic edge. VERY nice card that does output to your HT.
 
I've got a Plat 5.1, and as I recall isn't the digital output in the form of an 1/8" plug, like headphones? If it is, then couldn't someone jimmy up a cord from the 1/8" to a reg. coax connector? I know there would be signal degredation, and maybe some company does make a cable, but this would appear to be a viable solution.
 
nutbucket--
already tried that, only outputs the front speakers w/ no center. it's cool, I already took back the 5.1 and upgraded from 128MB generic to 256MB pc 133 Toshiba memory.
 
Crizza,

The "optical junk" is what you need to connect to a home theater receiver. On the Live Drive II you can use the optical or coaxial digital outputs to connect to an optical or coaxial digital input on your home theater receiver. The signal is a raw digital signal following the SPDIF specification. Your receiver should be able to get PCM, AC3, and DTS bitstreams over this interface. As I understand it the small digital out on the rear of the SBLive 5.1 card itself is not a standard interface and will not send surround formats to a receiver, it is meant to connect to a set of digital PC speakers.

That "fr/fl and rr/rl" setup you suggested is a joke!!!!! Get a clue!! In case your forgot 5.1 surround is actually 6 speakers. Right front, center, left front, right rear, left rear, and subwoofer (the subwoofer is the .1 channel since it only supports low frequencies).

I really hate it when people talk out their asss when they don't have a clue.

Sorry to be harsh, but I bet others will agree with me on this one.
 
i got a regular xgamer, and 5 speaker setup and 3 subs..but i also got the dtt2500.🙂

you could order the digital din to minijack...and see what else they can get you for the other side.

edit: all speakers work. nice in CS.
 
I have the X-Gamer 5.1 and sort of have 5.1 working. I went to Radio Shack and bough a 1/8 to 1/4 adaptor and than a 1/4 to RCA (same as digital coax) adaptor and pluged this into a coax input on my receiver.

Well what happens is that I get PCM with games. The receiver does get the AC3 Dolby Digital signal when I play the .ac3 sample files that came with the card, but when I play a DVD the damn thing still puts out a PCM stream despite being set to put out AC3. I want to return the piece of crap, pay the restocking fee and get a Hercules Game Theater XP, not only does the Hercules card support all the crap that the SB does, it also has DTS support and 5.1 analog outputs (6 RCA outputs one for each channel (left,right,center,left rear,right rear,sub)
 
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