7.1 or 5.1 Receiver that connects to ur computer soundcard?

I'm interested in buying some speakers for my pc and so far all the good one's I've heard of are made before 2005 and so I was just wondering if u can connect one of those home theater receiver thingy majigys to ur pc?

I'm thinking of getting on of those creative x-fi cards their analog if i'm correct?

would u need a certain type of 7.1 receiver, or could any of them do it?

i have x-fi fatality and a kenwood dolb digital receiver at 5.1. sound is amazing and you plug it in optical and everything is detected by itself. upgraded from logitech speakers z-5500. These are really good but home theatre receiver and speakers really blows gaming away. if you have a small room go for logitech anythin more than 20X20 feet go crazy for home theatre. it depends on your budget.

ok! I get it now thx for the replies

true. i guess i was thinking of the receiver matrixing the stereo pcm signal, it would be surround, but not discrete surround... definetly not the same. (i think also that eax wasnt able to be used over stereo pcm either)... so i guess what i said about coaxial/optical is kinda pointless with an x-fi concerning gaming

thats the same thing i had said before... according to creative though when they had been asked about it by someone else in an email, they responded with (paraphrased) 'its not possible/supported', but, they could have been wrong too... even if it is their own product

Connecting an X-Fi to a digital amplifier through a digital cable will cause games to be played in stereo mode

WHAO!! Crash... Havnt seen you in a long time! 8O

LOL... Im just blind :?

Depends, are you going to use 6-channel-direct or digital coax/optical?

I would suggest the Chaintech AV-710 if your needs are just music and movies.

If you want surround sound gaming you'll need a soundcard that can do Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect real-time encoding - it takes the encodes the surround sound in games (which is not in a digitally compressed form) and encodes them into a format that a receiver or decoder can recognize. Look at Blue Gears or Turtle Beach as the more popular manufacturers of these cards.

No idea, can't help you there. You should do some homework and google up AV forums where users have experience with this sort of thing.

nice, but the thing is the home theater sytem i'm planning to buy costs me around $300 and i don't think that buying a $200 card for it is worth it lol.

If you are that budget limited you ought to just get something like a Chaintech or stick with onboard until you've got the budget for a better audio system.