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Trying to set up Surround sound

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  • Gaming
  • Components
  • Sound Cards
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September 27, 2014 8:24:16 AM

I'm trying to set up surround sound with my PC for gaming purposes with a Sony 5.1 bluray receiver. My sound card is a crappy onboard Realtek with S/PDIF Optical output but it won't output surround to the receiver. I need to find a sound card to handle this, but don't know what to pick. Im not made of money so anything uber expensive is entirely out of the question. That aside, the receiver has a sound effects mode which consists of AFD Standard and AFD Multi, Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Pro Logic 2 Movie, DTS Neo 6 Cinema, DTA Neo 6 Music, and Standard 2 channel. What would work best for gaming? Does the sound card need to output one of those formats?

Thanks for your help!

More about : set surround sound

September 27, 2014 8:36:35 AM

Hello... There is no standard Digital interface/communications mode that audio makers use... each can have their own.
So you need to first find out the communication MODE your unit requires for " 5.1 " AND the cable type used... and then finding the right card will be easy.
The Realtek Chips do provide Analog outputs for a reciever with such inputs...
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September 27, 2014 8:22:08 PM

I did finally figure out what I was doing and got it working. I'll break down what I did to get it working for the short term and the sound card I bought for the long-term, in case any fellow surround-sound / PC Audio newbies like me stumble across this thread.

My motherboard is an Asus P7H55-M Pro. It comes with a (fairly decent for on-board) Realtek HD on-board audio chipset with multiple outputs and inputs on the back, and a Optical audio output (I found out this is also known as S/PDIF and TOSLINK, which stands for Toshiba Link). By default, the Realtek drivers do *NOT* give you access to any surround features, and as such any and all audio going from your PC is leaving as standard 2-channel stereo sound.

What took me longest to figure out was that for the type of sound I was trying to output (and was incorrectly trying to google Dolby Digital 5.1 Over optical for) was that what you REALLY want to find is Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect (the competitors answer to Dolby Digital Live). What this does is bypasses the need for Analog (those headphone-jack looking things on the sound card) connectors to output the 5.1 audio to the receiver to send to the speakers. What Dolby Live and DTS Connect do is they take the PC's audio channels from media such as music, movies, games, etc... and pipes it through a single optical cable into your receiver for it to figure out what to do with it.

If you play music which is 2-channel stereo, dolby will not encode it as surround and will send it to your receiver where it will be properly output as 2 speakers (And your sub of course). However, if you set a video game to 5.1 Surround, it will detect and encode the 6 channels and send them through where your receiver will notice and send them to their respective speakers.

That alone took me a while to realize that it was the key to getting surround from my system.

My next hurdle was that as previously stated, the default drivers from Realtek does not infact include unlocked support for more than 2 channel output. Therefore, tweaking will be necessary. I can summarize the solution to getting a new working driver by pointing you to this link:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/unlocked-real...

If you do exactly whats listed there, you can get 5.1 Output out of your Realtek optical port. Theres a catch, however. Every time you start your computer, you must run a software (listed in that link) that activates Windows Test mode after an other reboot. It allows the computer to run without checking for microsoft-signed drivers and is ESSENTIAL for it to work. Because of this massive hassle, and the downfalls of on-board audio, I came to a pretty logical conclusion.

CUT MY NIPPLES OFF.

Wait, no that's not quite right. The logical conclusion is to buy a Dedicated soundcard with Optical TOSLINK output and supports Dolby Digital Live, DTS Connect or both. I personally chose the Creative Sound Blaster Z because I trust their products and own a number of them, new and old and have had nothing but good experiences with it. You can get this sound card from between $60-$110 in-stores or online. There's also the Creative Sound Blaster Zx, and the Creative Sound Blaster ZxR which are steps up, bu the Z in its basic form looks to be a fantastic card that out-performs every other entry level sound card in terms of EVERYTHING, from what I've seen. I hear Asus can be pretty fantastic as well, so you may look into that.

Finally, I got worried because I wondered "can my receiver decode this signal? Its got a bunch of presets, is that all it can do?" The short answer, no, it will do it. They are essentially post-processing for 2-channel audio and movies. At least, if yours is like mine and your receiver also happens to be a Bluray Drive. (I have a home theater setup that comes with the bluray drive and a 5.1 Surround system).

The system I happen to use is a Sony Blu Ray/ DVD / CD Home Theater System BDV-T28. In the audio options, it includes the following effects and settings for Surround Sound:

A.F.D Standard (Automatic Format Direct Standard)*
A.F.D Multi (Automatic Format Direct Multi)
Dolby Pro Logic
Dolby PLII Movie (Dolby Pro Logic 2 Movie)
DTS Neo 6: Cinema
DTS Neo 6: Music
2 Ch Stereo

It's apparently mostly just for Blu ray and DVD movies, and movies from your computer, etc... So you will get to ignore MOST of those.

The reason I put a * next to A.F.D Standard is because if you use a Sony receiver like me, that's kinda cryptic, but its also the one you wanna select. A.F.D Standard lets the receiver automatically detect the audio format of any media input and deal with it as such, instead of trying to forcefully decode it with or apply the filtering of one of the others on that list.

Simply put, A.F.D Standard on Sony receivers is known on most other devices simply as "Auto".

Auto mode on the receiver (or A.F.D Standard) + Dolby Digital Live (or DTS Connect) = PC Optical 5.1 Surround sound.

Anyhow, that's all I got for ya, and I hope somebody else in the same or a similar boat finds this thread and it helps them on their way to successful surround sound and such! Bleh!
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