Cable, Soundblaster

[Jake75]

Hi, just a quick question:
What sort of cable do I need to connect my SoundBlaster Live 5.1 to a surround receiver?

I got plenty of different inputs on my receiver so that won't be a problem.

I've been asking around at various shops but they all give different (or no) suggestions...

Thanks alot.

/Jaques

<font color=blue>Youth is wasted on the young</font color=blue>

 

[astrallite]

Well you would need to goto Radioshack for that anyway (and they would know).

It's an RCA to stereo mini converter. You can get it in converter or cable form. For short runs, cable form is better, since the converter is heavy and will weigh down your RCA cable. For longer runs you have no choice, since the RCA to mini cable is only about 6 feet long.

About $7 for the cable, less for the converter. You'd need one for each analog out (3).

 

[Codesmith]

Forget about the .1. Normal stereo jacks have 3 poles (ground and 2 signals), to access the subwoofer channel you need a special 4 pole jack to 3 RCA cable which doesn't seem to exist.

The subwoofer output is on the 3rd channel.

Such cables exist for camcorders and other devices but they are not wired correctly for the SB Live 5.1.

If you need 5.1 you will have to use Digital Output or create your own 4-pole stereo to 3 rca connector.

 

[Jake75]

Thanks for the replies guys, I've tried to get it right with a heapload of various cables now with no luck...

I'll try to get that digital cable somehow, I'm living in a small town right now where they still use vinyl instead of cd's...


<font color=blue>Youth is wasted on the young</font color=blue>

 

[Codesmith]

For digital output you just use the same stereo jack to 2 RCA adapter. Actually I think you can also use a mono jack to 1 RCA.

I think the SPDIF output is on the first channel, center on the second and subwoofer on that damn third channel which needs a takes a special jack to connect to.

To get 5.1 from avi files with AC3 sound tracks you need to turn on AC3 decoding, turn on digital output and have AC3 Filter installed and set SPDIF bypass with system setting at "wave out" rather than "direct sound".

For anything other than a movie you are stuck with 2 channel digital output as realtime 5.1 AC3 encoding is a feature few cards support.

 

[marshahu]

Lets keep things simple - heres what I did with my Audigy 2 to run two sets of 5.1 speakers. So uno whats going on, heres the 411 and how you can go about getting 5.1 surround sound on your home cinema amp and your speakers if you wish.

The green socket handles Front Left and Right channels
The black socket handles Rear Left and Right channels
The orange socket handles the Center and Subwoofer channels. On a 6.1 system like mine the plug will have three poles for an extra rear center but your only dealing with 5.1 so to keep matters simple well just assume it handles center and subwoofer.

My memory is a tad hazy on the Live! 5.1 cards but I think the center/subwoofer channel is also a digital output socket but I'm not too sure. Anywhere heres what I did.

Purchase THREE 3.5mm -> 2 RCA Jack Cables. However long they are depend on the distance between your sound card and receiver. If you wish to have your current 5.1 speakers running alongside your Home Cinema receiver, purchase three of those Ipod Headphone Splitters or a STEREO 3.5mm splitter (It's important that you get stereo otherwise you'll only get mono sound from a pair of speakers) and then place them in the Green, Black and Orange sockets.

Next, Plug your 5.1 PC speakers into one of the new sockets as before. Then fill the remaining of the new sockets with the newly purhcased 3.5mm -> 2 RCA jack cables.

On your home cinema amp locate a 6CH input

There will be 6 RCA sockets with each pair being labelled front, rear, and then maybe a center and subwoofer socket.

- For the cable running from the Green socket place the white and red plugs into the sockets paired "Front" (White is left, red is right).

- For the cable running from the black socket place the white and red plugs in the scokets paired "Rear" or "Surround" depending on your amp. Some amps like Harmon Kardon may colour the surround channels differently as opposed to red and white. If this is the case place the white plug into the Rear/Surround Left socket and the red plug into the Rear/Surround Right socket.

- For the cable running from the orange socket place the white plug into the "Center" socket and the red socket into the "subwoofer" socket.

- Turn on your amplifier and change to 6CH analogue input. Run a speaker test to ensure the cables are connected correctly.

An alternative would be to use the mini jack -> RCA or Optical cable to get digital output. This will place the burden on your decoder to decode the surround soundtrack, although overall sound quality should increase. However even the Audigy 2 has given me problems when using the digital output as I never get full 5.1 sound, and I cannot play EAX games or DVD Audio discs well using this format, which is why I stick to the tried and tested analogue method.

PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows XP

 

[Codesmith]

The SB Live 5.1 has the digital out, center and subwoofer on the same 3.5mm 4 pole jack. The subwoofer is on the third channel which is unaccessable via a standard stereo (3.5mm 3 pole) jack to 2 RCA converter.

You need a 3.5mm to 3 RCA converter which I personally was never able to find, or you are stuck with 5.0.

BTW the .1 is a real channel with unique output not sent to the other 5 speakers.

 

[marshahu]

I would have thought that the digital out would be on the third pole which is inaccessable to normal cables - otherwise according to your logic that woudl mean that plugging in a set of 5.1 speakers would not work unless the plug has a third pole for the subwoofer terminal :-S


PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows XP

 

[Crashman]

You have a few options.

First of all, ignore the .1, it's also spread across Left and Right front channels. .1 isolates the lower frequencies to its own channel, the same way any subwoofer crossover would. So you can get the .1 from some stereo systems off the stereo signal, or from some speaker systems that have their own crossover.

You can do 3 analog cables with most cards to do left/right, lr/rr, and center/sub. I don't know why Creative would put the sub on something other then that.

As for digital out, it won't really work right. My friend spent hours trying to figure it out, basically the problem is that Creative cards don't have Dolby Digital Live, so anything that's not pre-recorded comes through stereo on the digital output.

Of course if your primary concern is getting digital sound from movies, the digital output will transfer all channels.

There's something else about the SB Live and AC3...but I can't remember.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Jake75]

Sorry for the late reply.
I've solved the problem, as it turns out I got the correct cable from the start...
I had to do a re-install of the OS and after that everything worked fine.
I used a 3.5mm to RCA converter (plugged into the digital out on my Soundblaster) and a coaxial cable to my surround receiver.
My receiver detects all the channels and it seems that all the "information" is there so I'm happy.

Thanks yet again for all the replies and sorry if I don't give any "credits" to anyone in particular (if you had the "correct" answer that is), I'm kind of drunk right now and I just hastily read thru all the replies =)

Have a nice weekend dudes & dudettes
/Jaques


<font color=blue>Youth is wasted on the young</font color=blue>