Testing 5.1 speakers

[Mitzi]

I connected a set of DTT3500 speakers to the onboard sound (AL650 I think) via the optical cable. Whilst sound does come out of the rear/centre/sub woofer when playing games/music etc when I go into Control Panel and do the speaker 'test', they remain mute so I am not sure if I have correctly configured them.

I was just wondering what is the best test for 5.1 speakers - I don't have a DVD drive so testing them that way is out. Are there any 5.1 compatible games around??

 

[Mday]

i think they remain mute because you ahve them connected to the optical, and not via the mini stereo cables.

 

[Pariah]

With the DTT3500, the external decoder box does the audio processing expanding the stereo source to a multichannel source. You can only send a unencoded stereo source through the optical cable, so nothing but the front main speakers will play anything in the speaker test. In order to get surround sound the way games were designed to you need to use the 4 channel analog out if possible from the sound card.

 

[Mitzi]

Originally posted by: Pariah
With the DTT3500, the external decoder box does the audio processing expanding the stereo source to a multichannel source. You can only send a unencoded stereo source through the optical cable, so nothing but the front main speakers will play anything in the speaker test. In order to get surround sound the way games were designed to you need to use the 4 channel analog out if possible from the sound card.

Thanks very much - I don't have a clue about this sort of thing. So instead of using the optical cable I should use the analog cables - correct??

 

[Pariah]

Since you don't listen to any encoded audio streams, yes, you should exclusively use the analog outs for best performance.