surround sound and creative sb

[thelastmccabe]

I know about avs forum, and I used it a lot when I was choosing a plasma tv. But it's all just too much and too advanced when it comes to surround sound, and I couldn't find an faq. If anyone can point me to a basic guide or faq about all things surround sound on the pc and home theatre, I'd really appreciate it. Didn't get much googling it.

Some specific questions I've got if you feel like answering: I've got an msi k8n sli, which comes with a soundblaster live! 24-bit, on the website it says its dolby digital ready. First, I'm wondering what kind of sound quality you get from mini-jacks running surround sound for games or what not--is it pretty decent or can you hear lots of interference? Second question: Is it possible to save money buy getting a high end video card and using that for your computer and home theatre sound system by setting up something like:

dvd on computer--surround sound sound card--amp--speakers

A post I read somewhere here said something along the lines of 'if you want home theatre surround sound get a 400 dollar receiver or don't bother,' and I'm wondering if that's really the case and if i can get around that somehow. Ok thank you.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I just kind of dove unto AVSforum and hometheater forum until I figured out what the heck was going on 😉

You can hook up to a receiver in a few ways:

A) one 1/8" to dual RCA adapter running stereo and let your receiver use Dolby Pro Logic (or an equivalent) to get sound from all speakers

B) multiple 1/8" to dual RCA adapters (3 in the case of 5.1) and run to a 6 channel direct input on your receiver

C) run a digital cable (either optical or coaxial) to the reciever

Option A is the easiest and will work with any receiver. You wont get true surround sound or DD when watching a DVD off your comptuer. Sound quality is limited by the DACs in your soundcard. The connection for 1/8" to RCA shouldn't affect the quality of your final output unless you have some insanely expensive stuff.

Option B only works on some receivers that are able to accept an externally decoded signal. You'll get true surround this way. There is a bit of an issue with the soundcard not setting crossover frequencies for the signals I think, but it will work just fine.

Option C is what I am doing. Your quality will be limited by the DACs in your receiver rather than your soundcard. You'll get stereo output for music and games usually and true DD when watching movies that are DD encoded because it will send the encoded signal to the receiver for decoding. There are also some solutions (like soundstorm and the X-mystique) that do real time DD encoding so you'll get the best of everything.




Ok, saying all that... I agree with the $400 statement. If you're not going to get at least something in the range of an Onkyo HTIB, you're better off just getting a comptuer speaker set.

Ok... I have to go eat 😉

Let me know if you have any other questions heh.

EDIT: I'm back 😉

re-reading what you wrote, I thought you had said $400 for a system, not $400 for a receiver. You can get a whole system for under $450 that will sound pretty good. No need for a $400 receiver for this.

I'm also not sure what your videocard question is asking. It will have no effect on the sound output.

 

[thelastmccabe]

Thanks for the response. I've been looking around avsforums a bit more and am starting to sort of figure out what's going on. I've also decided to just hook up the plasma tv stuff seperate from the computer since its mainly for my parents and they don't want to mess around with the computer. I'll tackle hooking my computer up to it later on. The plasma/home theatre system is going in a pretty small room, so I don't think I need anything close to 100 watts per speaker. I also have 4 (2 pairs) nice speakers and subwoofer I can put in there, assuming that I don't need to have special speakers, which I'm pretty sure I don't. I'm sure I can find another speaker somewhere to be the center one and find a way to prop it up (or down) if i need to. So I'm wondering if I can get a receiver that provides good sound quality but low power and is therefore cheaper. Also wondering if the side speakers for 5.1 setup ought to be the kind that produce sound out of both sides (can't remember the term for this) or if regular speakers will be adequate. Thanks for your help.

 

[thelastmccabe]

Ah, i see your edit now, and that's good news, so i guess my only question is: will regular speakers work?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: thelastmccabe
Ah, i see your edit now, and that's good news, so i guess my only question is: will regular speakers work?

If by regular speakers you mean regular 8ohm hometheater speakers, then that's a big yes.

It's just like hooking up a normal sound system except you're using a computer as one of the inputs to the receiver. You don't need anything special.

As far as wattage is concerned, most budget receivers (under $400) aren't going to actually put out anything near 100watts/channel even if they say they do.

Do you know what kind of connection sounds good to you from the ones I listed?

If you're looking to do the 6 channel direct option, this denon would get the job done. (It would be a good choice even if you didn't want to take that route)

You could go a bit cheaper if you didn't need the 6 channel input.

EDIT: Oh, and that's a refub receiver. You can get a much better deal if you go refurbished. I have two receivers off ebay and both work quite well.