Sage + Surround Sound + PC Speakers

[Humanzee]

I'm in the midst of moving my HTPC hardware from my slower motherboard & processor to my faster motherboard and processor to support HDTV recording. (New HDTV ) The old mother board is an AMD 1.9Ghz with a soundblaster live card and Im just using the speakers in the tv for audio. The faster board is a Gigabyte K8N Pro with an Athlon64 3200+ It also has an on board AC'97 (I think) sound card and I have a set of logitech 5.1 speakers for it that I am happy with.

The logithech are the z640 series (I think) and use 3 headphone jacks to plug into the sound card for center, FR, FL, RR, RL and Sub. The speakers sound pretty good and they all test out with the windows set up software.

I am considering taking these speakers out of the office and setting them up with the TV for use with Sage and the AC'97. I have a mental disconnect though as to is whether or not I will be able to listen to surround sound from movies and tv with this set up. I read about surround sound working with the S/PDIF pass through but though my sound card has an optical output these are analog speakers and I don't yet have a home theater amplifier.

I have never heard any audio coming from the satellite speakers while watching anything on the PC. Is this just a codec issues? I purchased the nVidia decoders with my 6600GT but currently the audio tab does not show with the soundblaster live. When I move everything to the newer MB will these surround speakers just start working with the nVidia decoders.

I spent all my money on the new TV so I can't yet justify to the wife spending another couple grand on theater sound. Is there an add on sound card that will definitely work with analog pc speakers for not a lot of $$?

Thanks for any help, surround sound with out a lot of extra money will improve the WAF.

[Wakecrash]

I thought the z640 has its own built in decoder and amplifier, which means it should have a spdif in connector. Your new mother bd should have a spidf out and the z640 should have a spdif in. so it should be rather simple. From the MB take the line out and connect to your TV, and spdif out connect to your z640. The spdif may be labled something like coaxial digital.

The Nforce boards will output both digital and analog at the same time, the SB Live card I had would not.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

I thought the z640 has its own built in decoder and amplifier, which means it should have a spdif in connector.

Nope, it has an amplifier in the unit with the subwoofer but no PCM or S/PDIF input, I wish it did.

[insomniac]

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/...pno~178001.asp

you will get a great little receiver/amp/DVD player + awesome speakers. If you shop around, you will find that this setup sells for an average of $1000 in any retail store. I cannot say enough good things about this setup. Im normally a pure component kinf of guy, but am now a convert! Amazing surround and all around great ranges.

If you check this setup out in person (via cc or bby) you will find that they are absolutely clueless on how to configure it, and it will sound like crap. I was stressing greatly until mine delivered, and was pleasantly surprised by the amazing sound this package produces.

Its well worth running a passthrough to a receiver, and with this $369 rig, you can make it pop!

Food for thought!

I.

[Wakecrash]

You might try to see if your onboard sound and SB Live card can place nice together. Hook the speakers to your SB Live and TV to motherboard out.

If they don't play nice, maybe try drivers for your SB Live card here, http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/down.php?language=en

I read recently someone did get a soundcard and on board to work together. But SB always likes to be picky.

[Humanzee]

Thanks for the info guys, I'd really perfer to get the AC'97 6 channel sound card to output Dolby Digital, and AC3 if possible. I guess thats what I'm asking. Can that be done via the on board audio without using PCM or S/PIDF digital outputs pluged into some other decoding device. I mean it has 6 channels and I have 6 speakers, right, I just figured for as long as these surround sound cards have been used for games, somebody would have figured out how to make them work with movies and such.

The last time I played with it was before I even had a HTPC so I havn't thought about it until I decided to switch the roles between my two computers. In a couple of days/weeks when I make the switch I guess I can just try it and see if it works. I just wanted to know if anybody had experience and could say that it "definetly would", "definetly would not", or "would work if you jump through this or that hoop".

I always planned to have a theater tuner, so I made sure to get a MB that had digital outputs but the time for a theater amp hasn't come yet. If I buy a smaller seperate amp and speakers with digital inputs now, I would only feel like I am postponing the purchase of a more powerful and desireable home theater reciever down the road.

Our biggest issue with the current set up is that when playing a DVD voices seem to be muted while they are coming from the stereo speakers on the TV. So of course we turn it up then when the special effects kick in you go deaf. I can only imagine this is because we have no center channel and the DVD is trying to render audio in surround sound.

Wakecrash, how would haveing the SBLive and my AC'97 working in tandem benefit in this scenario? If they were both outputing in stereo and I divided my speakers between the two cards I would get quadrophonic sound, which would surround me, but not be "surround sound" as per Dolby or AC3. I can already plug all the speakers into my AC'97, I just want them to be active in sage when playing something that has surround sound encoded in it.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

maybe try drivers for your SB Live card here, http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/down.php?language=en

This link advertises that you can get AC3 decoding with the SBLive card. and Direct 3d sound.

Is that what I'm after? will the Will the AC'97 do the same thing natively?

[gplasky]

With those speakers getting DD 5.1 is truly dependant on your sound card. Your built in sound may be able to pass DD 5.1 from a DVD but that would probably be it. If you're looking for real-time DD 5.1 all the time from any source check out the sound card below.


HDA X-Mystique


Gerry

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by gplasky

With those speakers getting DD 5.1 is truly dependant on your sound card. Your built in sound may be able to pass DD 5.1 from a DVD but that would probably be it. If you're looking for real-time DD 5.1 all the time from any source check out the sound card below.
HDA X-Mystique
Gerry

Thanks Gerry, Thats what I wanted to find out, that card looks pretty nice and appears to be well recieved. Ill try out my existing card with my existing speakers and then get one of these if I'm not happy.

[Wakecrash]

My only thought of seeing if your sb Live and MB audio would play nice was so you do not have to have your 5.1 speakers on all of the time, since you really only get 5.1 from a DVD, not through Sage. I turn my TV speakers off when watching a DVD. I use digital out from mobo to surrond systme and analog out to my TV.
Your MB should decode dolby digital fine, depending on the DVD software you are using. You need to make sure it supports Dolby digital decode, OEM versions that come with DVD drive usually don't, they require you to upgrade to full version.
So when watching a DVD your mobo sound should be able to output direct to your the 3 headphone jacks of your speakers. Typically one jack is for front left/right, anouther for rear right/left, and anouther for center/sub. For standard Sage viewing, which is just stereo, you should just hear front left and right.

Of course true optical/coax digital out to a surrond system should sound better. But just try your existing speakers and mobo until you can save more cash.

[Humanzee]

Ok, I got all my tv encoder cards and hard drives moved over to the newer mother board with the AC'97 sound card. Hooked everything up and made a fresh install of the OS, Sage + nVidia PureVideo decoders. Moved the Logitech speaker set out to the living room. (the sub even fits in the entertainment center)

To make a long story short, it works pretty darn good.

To make a long story long, I am still fiddling with the Audio Renderer's and output devices, but I think I am set right now to default for recordings, and AC3 for DVD's. I rip DVD's to my imported video's folder as raw TS folders containing the vob files etc. Sage detects them as DVD's so the surround sound just works with out having to mess with it.

I still have to figure out what works the best with HD recordings as they also include surround sound audio. I am also wondering if I am truely getting dolby digital or dolby prologic as there is no display in sage to show you what is going on. When choosing the nVidia decoders, I don't always get audio output depending on how the media is encoded, thus I have left the settings to default in sage, and set up the nVidia drivers for a 5.1 speaker set up. When I bought the PureVideo decoder's fortunately I opted for the $49 version that is supposed to handle surround sound for ananlog output, vs. the $19 version which just passes it through to the digital output.

This seems to be the ticket, but I havn't tested enough to know exactly what is going on. HD channels appear to be in surround sound but the volume is way lower than the SD channels.

Anyway, I though I'd post back to update this thread. You CAN indeed get analog surround sound to work with an AC'97 if you configure your card, drivers, and sage correctly. Also, Winamp audio is coming out from all the speakers, which it didn't do before. Though, I wonder if that is the updated winamp or nVidia's doing? Or I could have the matrix button pressed on the speakers.

[shawncochran]

I may be lost on this one, but I thought I read that you wanted to use the onboard audio (AC'97) and the 6ch (5.1) output to a receiver? If that is the case, look at the Creative Labs DTS-610 Home Theater Connect http://www.creative.com/products/pro...&product=14191

If not, I'll shut up and go back to coloring in my Big Chief Tablet.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by shawncochran

I may be lost on this one, but I thought I read that you wanted to use the onboard audio (AC'97) and the 6ch (5.1) output to a receiver?

Nope, just regular old pc speakrs, but 5.1 of them, no amplifier or dolby decoder.

Some observations about my setup. The purevideo decoders only output analog surround sound in "supported" media players, like Windows Media Player. Not sage. Whoopdi doo. So scratch my comment about the benefits of the gold version of the nvidia decoder.

I have reverted to useing the AC3 decoder for all audio processing. Its the only way I've found of reliably running sage with analog surround sound and my pc speakers. The pure video decoders are super quiet for some reason, even in WMP so AC3 was the only way I found to get similar sound volumes between media types, ie DVD, HDTV and SDTV.

I think I've just about wasted enough time with mediocre hardware. I mean why do I have a job anyway? I should just go buy some diecent equipment. Now all I have to do is convince the wife.

[spike5884]

Originally Posted by insomniac

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/...pno~178001.asp

Link does not work... Results in "Cannot find item: 178001".