homemade surround sound?

[asoccerplayer99]

I have a motherboard (Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L) with a built in sound card that supports 5.1 surround and I own 4 speakers. Two are large and require an amp (which I have), and 2 are normal computer speakers with a power plug.

Does setting up surround sound on my computer just mean plugging everything in properly to the sound card, then enabling the surround via the software? If not, is there any way to turn my 4 speakers into a home made surround sound system?

 

[MadHacker]

Does setting up surround sound on my computer just mean plugging everything in properly to the sound card, then enabling the surround via the software?

Yes.

 

[jay_l_a]

No. Yes. Depends.

Most onboard 5.1 sound will pass through 5.1 if the SOURCE is 5.1 for example a DVD that is in the DVD drive.

However, no (current) onboard soundcard will GENERATE 5.1. So if you want to get 5.1 surround in a game, you'd need a sound card that could generate 5.1

 

[asoccerplayer99]

Really? I had never heard that before, but I dont do much with sound heh. To be clear though, my board has (from the website): 8 Channels ALC888 Audio controller. Setting up the speakers properly would not get me real surround sound in games? I dont just mean sound coming from all speakers, I want real surround sound. When Alma attacks me from behind in FEAR2 I dont want to hear it from my front speakers =P I do have an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro, but for a while there were no Vista drivers (I use Vista 64 Ultimate) so I put that on the shelf to collect dust. Other than the fact that it has a whole boatload of plugs, how can I tell if that will do what I want?

 

[blackened144]

If you connect each set of speakers to the analog multi-channel surround on the motherboard you will get real surroundsound.. Although your missing the center/sub speakers for 5.1..

I think what jay_l_a was saying about generating 5.1, is that if the source is 5.1, like a DVD or Game, it will play in surroundsound. But if the source is just plain stereo, like you would get on a crappy divx movie, your onboard sound will not play that in surroundsound mode.. If you got a better sound card though, it will play all audio in surroundsound mode, even plain stereo audio.

 

[asoccerplayer99]

Fantastic, thanks! As far as the "center/sub" goes, do those two speakers usually go into the same plug? Forgive me if thats a dumb question, I've never handled a PC surround system before

 

[blackened144]

Yes. In the multichannel setup with 3 plugs there is a rear l/r, front l/r, and center/sub... Each cable uses a 2channel 1/8 stereo plug, thats how you get all 6 channels into the 3 jacks..

 

[jay_l_a]

I'm confusing analog and digital outs. Sorry

I *think* you should be fine.

slightly O/T but if you have a s/pdif out my above statement is true.

So even if a game has an option for 5.1 no current mobo can encode this and place the 5.1 channels on s/pdif, you'll only get 2 channels. For 5.1 you need one of the c-media (or equivalent) audio chips to encode Dolby Digital Live.

 

[asoccerplayer99]

Gotcha, thanks =) S/PDIF is that optical port right? Do real surround sound systems utilize that? I dont think I've ever encountered anything that does, how does that sound as opposed to the analog outputs?

 

[jay_l_a]

Gotcha, thanks =) S/PDIF is that optical port right? Do real surround sound systems utilize that? I dont think I've ever encountered anything that does, how does that sound as opposed to the analog outputs?

It can be either the toslink (optical) or digital over an RCA-type jack. It's a protocol rather than the actual port.

It can be used for 5.1 sound (eg DTS, Dolby Digital), but cannot be used for the higher bitrate requirements of DD+ and TrueDH. For that you need HDMI, or just pass through uncompressed analog.

Think of s/pdif as a set of instructions rather than the sound itself. The s/pdif signal has to be decoded, and the decoder is really what dictates the sound quality (along with interconnects, speakers etc).

If you have a system that accepts s/pdif, then you can get a soundcard which will output s/pdif. The sound quality should be limited by the quality of the surround system, rather than the soundcard......

 

[bobwya]

Think of s/pdif as a set of instructions rather than the sound itself. The s/pdif signal has to be decoded, and the decoder is really what dictates the sound quality (along with interconnects, speakers etc).

No think of s/pdif link as fibre-optic cable carrying a digital signal modulated on a laser light carrier...

Sounds good to me.

Bob

 

[kamkal]

analog
---------
You can do analog surround over the mini jacks no problem
just hook up the speakers and you are good to go
just set your sound prefs to quad channel in sound properties



digital
--------
and yes jayla is correct, most onboard sound cards cannot do 5.1 over digital for things like games

games will show up in stereo over digital

the reason movies work though is because movie audio is already compressed and ready to go and the sound card just passes it along

an external receiver/amp is required when using digital as well to decode the digital signal your sound card is passing along

 

[jay_l_a]

No think of s/pdif link as fibre-optic cable carrying a digital signal modulated on a laser light carrier...

Sounds good to me.

Bob

How do you send laser light over coaxial cable? Answer: You can't.

You're confusing s/pdif with TOSLINK.

A good analogy is TCP/IP and CAT5 cabling. TCP/IP is the protocol, CAT 5 is the physical interconnect. But CAT5 isn't the only way to support the protocol.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

No. Yes. Depends.

Most onboard 5.1 sound will pass through 5.1 if the SOURCE is 5.1 for example a DVD that is in the DVD drive.

However, no (current) onboard soundcard will GENERATE 5.1. So if you want to get 5.1 surround in a game, you'd need a sound card that could generate 5.1

I can testify to that. had a similiar post myself about how i could get 5.1 from DVD but not games using onboard surround sound. Had to install my old audigy zs 2 to get games in surround.

 

[kamkal]

I can testify to that. had a similiar post myself about how i could get 5.1 from DVD but not games using onboard surround sound. Had to install my old audigy zs 2 to get games in surround.

same here, i got these cheesy digital speakers once with decoder built in but no surround for games, returned them right away after researching the problem lol

 

[bobwya]

How do you send laser light over coaxial cable? Answer: You can't.

You're confusing s/pdif with TOSLINK.

Ah good point... Thank you for being gentle with me!! :lol:

Bob