4.1 Speakers with 5.1 sound card?

There will be no center channel, but it shouldn't be a problem.

Lots of people have been impressed with the Logitech z560s.

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Don't step in the sarcasm!

Depends on what you want to do:

1. If you watch Dolby Digital DVDs on your computer, your DVD software will downmix the 5.1 into 4.1 and will attempt to fake the true center channel with a phantom center, which doesn't sound as good.

2. Many EAX games use the center channel. I didn't believe this myself until I disconnected all speakers except the center and I actually heard sound from the center in several of my EAX games when things happened right in front of me. But this isn't really a big deal; a phantom center in games works fine because the speakers are so close to you and sound is rendered on the fly. But in Dolby Digital DVDs, the center is a separate discrete channel that you ideally don't want to mess up by downmixing.

3. Any other sounds generated in Windows (MIDI, WAV, MP3s, etc) are simple 2-channel stereo and do not use the center channel unless you force an upmix using Playcenter's CMSS mode, which IMO sounds like crap. So a 5.1 system is quite unnecessary for all these sounds.

Of course, I would much rather go with quality 4.1 speakers than mediocre 5.1 speakers. Really, unless you're into watching DVDs on your computer, the center channel is unnecessary. The phantom center works fine for games.

Ritesh

"1. If you watch Dolby Digital DVDs on your computer, your DVD software will downmix the 5.1 into 4.1 and will attempt to fake the true center channel with a phantom center, which doesn't sound as good."

How much worse does it sound? Do you mean the quality of the sounds get worse? Or the surround sound part os it just doesnt sound as good because it doesnt use the center channel correctly?

A true 5.1 system with excellent speakers and sub will reproduce exactly what the audio director intended for the Dolby DVD edition of the movie. Although you can't expect "excellent" performance in 5.1 for less than at least $1000 for the speakers alone, the available computer systems like Klipsch and Videologic do very well in DVD performance *for the price*, as long as you sit within a few feet of the drivers. But I think only Klipsch offers a good 5.1 computer system. Forget Cambridge Soundworks, I've listened to their systems and I've never been impressed.

The quality of 4.1 sound in DVDs will depend on the quality of the downmixing algorithms used. I've heard that the latest software decoders like PowerDVD XP 4.0 do a pretty good job at downmixing. However, it can't sound as good as keeping the channels separate because this mixing has to be done "on the fly" as the DVD is playing, which means there will be compromises in the final downmixed quality.

A 4.1 system will, to some degree, compromise the quality of the front channels because the software is attempting to smear the center channel into the two fronts *while simultaneously decoding the audio and video in real time*. My guess is that, especially during heavy action scenes where all channels are playing, in the fronts you will lose some dynamic range of the signal and possibly some audio clarity as well. The degradation will probably be noticeable to an audiophile or serious audio enthusiast, but to most people it won't matter. Perhaps when 5 GHz CPUs come around and the downmixing algorithms are refined further, the software will be able to do it without any noticeable loss in quality.

Of course there's also the matter of losing the anchoring of voices and other sounds directly in front of you. But this is relatively minor on computer speakers because the separation between the front channels is small enough that a phantom center works pretty damn well! The main issue here is the final downmixed quality being inferior to the true 5.1 experience. But again, if you're not serious about watching DVDs on your computer, all of the above is just not a big deal.

Ritesh