Trying to get my laptop to output 5.1 sound..?

[bignateyk]

I have a Toshiba Portege M200 laptop, and it has SoundMax Digital Integrated Audio. The only output ports the laptop has are the headphone jack and the microphone jack.

I recently bought the logitech Z5450 speakers, which have the left/right channels on one cable, the rear channels on one cable, and the sub/center on another cable.

The control center for the speakers also has an audio-in port on it.

All I can manage to do is get my laptop to output sound to one speaker, and the subwoofer.

Is there any way to output 5.1 sound, or at the very least output the same sound to all of the speakers?

 

[Aikouka]

I can't remember for sure, but don't those speakers have the ability to emulate 5.1 sound from 2.0? I have a set of 'em, but I have a 5.1 sound card anyway and I'm changing to digital via optical cable in a day or two anyway.

 

[bignateyk]

hmm.. yeah after scrolling through the effects, I got something that output sound to all the speakers... guess thats better than nothing..

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

You should plug in the L/R (green) input for the speakers rather than the center/sub (yellow) one.

That should get you 2.1 at least.

From there I think you could enable a prologic mode on your control pod to get fake surround going.

Alternatively you could get use Logitech's game system adapter ($5?) and that will give you something kind of like "surround stereo".

The best solution would be to get a soundcard to get you true surround. There are USB models and models that will fit into an expansion slot of your laptop. For gaming, You might want to consider Creative's solutions... like the A2 zs notebook or the A2 NX.

If you are just doing movies for surround sound, you just need a device that will allow you to do passthrough of the digital bitstream signal to your 5450s for decoding.

If your are primarily doing music, I would suggest possibly returning the 5.1 set in favor of a higher quality 2.1 set instead.