Best 5.1 out?

[mtnboydl]

Hey all...I've got a sort of detailed question that I have yet to be able to answer. Anyone with experience is greatly appreciated.

I just moved into a new place where I had the builder wire in a 5.1 system into my office (so I can do spreadsheets more effectively?) Once I set my computer up, I couldn't wait to run a "spreadsheet" in full 5.1 glory with my Klipsch surround through a Yamaha RX receiver. I ran fiber optic from the onboard card to my receiver, with a DVI connection to my monitor. No matter the settings I use, I am stuck with essentially a stereo output...

A few words on my setup:
Windows 7 64bit
Rampage II Extreme (with included soundblaster x-fi that is apparently not actually a soundblaster product)
AMD 6970 x 2

My monitor is 1920x1200.

If I use HDMI pass through the receiver, it will only send 1080p to the monitor, which is obviously sub-par.

Can anyone start pointing me in the right direction? Thanks!!!!

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Digital Coaxial and Toslink are essentially stereo formats by design, but through encoding, can be made to carry 5.1 audio to a compatible receiver.

The encoding you are in the market for will be either Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect. Both will do the same thing, but theoretically DTS Connect may have a slightly higher bit rate.

Your audio device in your computer needs to support one or the other encoding schemes, and on the other end, your receiver needs to support decoding of either Dolby Digital or DTS, depending on the encoding you choose.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Official Sound Blast X-Fi cards do support both DDL (Dolby Digital Live) and DTS Connect encoding over optical and digital coaxial outputs. I can't say with any certainty the full support your chipset has without further investigation. These technologies were not always offered with the cards at retail, as a license is required, so for owners of X-Fi cards that were purchased before the feature was added, a small licensing fee was required by Creative Labs to activate the feature. DDL is also available on Creative Labs cards back to the Audigy 2, that I am aware of.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

On further digging, it looks like Asus cheaped out again as usual and your codec chip in your X-Fi branded audio device is a very limited AD2000B by ADI, except that it would appear ADI never even manufactured such a part.

3/4 of the way down, when they talk about the audio outputs: http://techreport.com/review/14655/asus-p5q-and-p5q3-deluxe-motherboards

"At the very least, it's disappointing that the AD2000B can't encode DTS or Dolby Digital Live bitstreams on the fly like some of Realtek's high-end audio codecs."

Your options for achieving 5.1 output from your current setup would be limited to bit-streaming pre-encoded audio such as a movie, DVD-audio disc, using analog output, or replacing Asus's sound device with one which is capable of live encoding.

 

[mtnboydl]

Thanks for the response. Does anyone have a recommendation for the best card to get for a lower price for the DTS/DDL encoding? The receiver is an RX-V367 so it should support either of those.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

The receiver claims support for both Dolby Digital and DTS, yes.

I would not recommend an expensive sound card for your purposes. Once you remove the DAC circuitry from the equation by using a digital output, you have made most of the soundcard's PCB unnecessary. You could eBay a real, used X-Fi, or even an Audigy 2 should provide DDL and be sufficient for your purposes. Heck, I have an Audigy 2 I just yanked from one of my systems if you want it, and shipping isn't too much, I can just UPS it to you. It doesn't have optical, but it does have digital coax out via a 1/8" mini-plug. That was always sufficient for my needs, and I found Creative Labs optical outs to have an inherent low level hiss to it anyway.

 

[mtnboydl]

I'm definitely interested! For just a moment...lets entertain the idea of not using a digital output with the above mentioned receiver. How would I be able to hook it up? To take advantage of a full deal card like you are talking about.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Well, if you're not going digital, you are going to be subject to all of the noise in the computer. The quality of the card is going to directly affect the quality of output you get. DAC's vary in quality, even on the same card. Even high end cards can use lower quality DAC for the rear channels, figuring most people won't notice.

Essentially, for analog output, you route one 1/8" stereo mini-plug for each pair of speakers, so for 5.1 you would have three cables running from your soundcard. You would then need to have corresponding inputs on your receiver to handle the 6 channels of input you are trying to feed it.

Back of your Amp: http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/av-receivers-amps/rx/rx-v367_black__u/?mode=model

Your receiver doesn't appear to support analog surround input, and honestly, I'm not surprised, as you gain nothing, and it seems expensive and wasteful from the manufacturers point of view to provide an unlikely, legacy connection source for new equipment.

If you look at the picture of the back of your receiver, you will notice you have both optical and what is labelled as coaxial connectors. These essentially transmit the same DATA, just do so differently, coaxially using electrical signals over copper wire and TOSLINK using fiber optic which then (hopefully) gets converted back to the same identical signals. Of course, you could have quality issues creep in with either format, electrical interference and drop-outs with coaxial and conversion errors introduced by optical, so I wouldn't say either is necessarily superior, unless you needed to go a very long distance, at which point optical might be more reliable.

The connection in either case for 5.1 audio over digital will be essentially a single cable. Either fiber optic or a long RCA cable. On the end connecting to the soundcard, you simply need to adapt it from RCA to 1/8" mono mini-plug.