Understand Dobly surround sound.

[scpunx]

okay, well i need abit of help understand digital dobly, i have a sound card that has digital dobly, although my speakers are logitech x-540 and do not have a digital input on the back of them.

so here my question of understand.

1. if i connect my speakers up to my computer just by using the standard input and not a optical cable, will i still get dobly suround sound?

2. if i connect a dvd player up to my sound card using a optical cable and then have the speakers that are connected to the sound card wired up by standard cable will i get dobly surround sound?


any feedback would be great...thanx.

 

[cjl]

Assuming your sound card can decode dolby digital, it should work fine as you described.

 

[scpunx]

one more thing.. do you still get digital dobly surround sound if you are not using optical cables?

thanks.

 

[cjl]

Yep. Of course, you won't get the best possible sound with any computer speakers, but the limiting factor is the speakers themselves, not the way that they are hooked up.

 

[will_chellam]

Right I'm going to start of by being pedantic about definitions

Dolby Surround = 2 channel 44khz with encoded mono rear channels at 22khz

Dolby Surround Pro-logic = as above with additional 44khz centre speaker

Dolby Digital = 5 channel 44khz + subwoofer channel (5.1)

Then there are additional new formats such as dolby-digital ex and tru-hd etc

Anyway in answer to your first question - it depends on your software but yes provided the software supports 5.1 channel sound you can achieve this through your propsed set-up, most games and dvd software will support this.

2. Do you mean connect a proper dvd player that sits under your tv to the soundcard? If so - you wont get anything out of the sound card at all unless you run some software to decode the digital signal to 5.1, however i would reccomend not doing this as you are likely to introduce a delay to the signal which means sounds wont match up to what your watching.

 

[scpunx]

well really its an xbox i want to hook up to the sound card via opticl cable and not a dvd player, just thought that it would make more since to ppl that way. this is my card http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-052-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=&name=Creative%20Sound%20Blaster%20X-Fi%20Xtreme%20Audio%207.1%20Sound%20Card%20-%20OEM%20(PCI-Express)%20(30SB104200000) dose the card decode it for me? or do i have to do it, or get addtional software to do it?

thanks a million so far!

 

[scpunx]

2. Do you mean connect a proper dvd player that sits under your tv to the soundcard? If so - you wont get anything out of the sound card at all unless you run some software to decode the digital signal to 5.1, however i would reccomend not doing this as you are likely to introduce a delay to the signal which means sounds wont match up to what your watching.

do you know were i can find this software?