7.1 or 5.1 Receiver that connects to ur computer soundcard?

ali123

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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?
 

choirbass

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you can pretty much use any 2, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 etc digital amplifier/receiver to connect to your pc... as long as it has proper amount of analog rca inputs on it, or has a digital optical toslink input or digital coaxial input on it (but, pretty much just about any current receiver could be used, TBH, anywhere from under $100 and up)

(heres an example of new receivers at bestbuy, for as cheap as $120 for a 6.1)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat03031&type=category
 

eav

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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.
 

astrallite

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Analog

Get RCA to stereo mini cables (or adaptors)

RCA to the receiver end, stereo mini for PC

Digital

Pretty simple, no adapters needed except for Creative sound cards, which you wouldn't want to use digital anyway, since digital bypasses the sound card altogether.
 

Crashman

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you can pretty much use any 2, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 etc digital amplifier/receiver to connect to your pc... as long as it has proper amount of analog rca inputs on it, or has a digital optical toslink input or digital coaxial input on it (but, pretty much just about any current receiver could be used, TBH, anywhere from under $100 and up)

(heres an example of new receivers at bestbuy, for as cheap as $120 for a 6.1)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat03031&type=category

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

choirbass

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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
 

astrallite

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EAX is not an encoded signal, it's processing applied to a signal. No reason why EAX wouldn't be applied over stereo pcm. It certainly is pointless if you want surround sound.
 

choirbass

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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
 

astrallite

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Considering any customer support in this country is technically outsourced, I wouldn't be surprised. Most of the call center support is incompetent for the major PC electronics brands in this country.
 

Clob

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you can pretty much use any 2, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 etc digital amplifier/receiver to connect to your pc... as long as it has proper amount of analog rca inputs on it, or has a digital optical toslink input or digital coaxial input on it (but, pretty much just about any current receiver could be used, TBH, anywhere from under $100 and up)

(heres an example of new receivers at bestbuy, for as cheap as $120 for a 6.1)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=cat03031&type=category

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
 

astrallite

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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.
 

ali123

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thankyou you're comments are very useful

which one do you think would be better?


turtle beach montego or bluegears b-enspirer
 

choirbass

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the Auzentech X-fi Prelude is probably the one to wait for (it should be out by late july, at around $200 though)... it has all the main features of an x-fi, 64mb xram, up to eax 5 and cmss support, etc (because creative licensed the technology out finally), offers DDL and DTSC soon through driver updates, so you can have discrete surround over a digital connection (the realtime encoding algorithms i would imagine have been improved some again too, over whats currently available, so sound quality should maybe see an improvement)... future support for HDMI 1.3 and its supported features... and is running on physically superior and even upgradable hardware (front opamps can be upgraded again for further improved front channel quality), so the analog fidelity is better yet again than currently available x-fi's

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/audio/1451-auzen-x-fi-prelude-pic.html
 

ali123

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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.