2 sets of speakers one PC

[massX]

Hi all first time post. Trying To find the best way to accomplish this task. I have two sets of speakers One is a Samsung sound Bar with a subwoofer and two additional rear speakers. I recently got a Great deal on a set of THX front speakers with a very nice subwoofer. I would like to hook up the Samsung System For the rear mainly and I have the sub to the back of my chair So I can really feel the games. The THX well for my main front sound.
What would be the best way to achieve This? Cheapest Solution Is always Best but am okay with buying Something to do it right. Would love any and all help. Thank you!

 

[pendragon1]

if you sound card is configurable at all you might be able to just plug them in. you could even just use a cable splitter if your not trying for surround and just want the sub to thump your butt.

 

[bluestang]

So you have 2 sets...the Samsung is a 3.1 system and the THX is a 2.1 system. Together they could technically make a 5.2 system like you want. What soundcard you have now or is it built-in to the MB? That will help us figure out if the software for managing the sound for it can assign it properly. Most likely shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Nobu]

What they said. A likely configuration would be the two front speakers connected to line-out, and the rear speakers connected to {rear, rear-left, and rear-right, sub} or just {rear, rl, rr} if the soundbar has it's own crossover and only uses one cable.

 

[Ebernanut]

There's a couple things I haven't seen anyone address yet. For one the type of connection they use is important since as far as I know windows(10) won't allow you to enable multiple sound outputs so if say the soundbar uses an optical connection and the other uses line level out you might not be able to enable both connections at the same time unless you can find a workaround, if they can both connect to line level outputs that would be the easiest way to hook them both up. I'm going to assume they're both powered speaker sets since most packaged setups are.

There are another couple of issues regarding sound quality to consider too. You generally want to match all your main(non-sub) speakers with ones that sound the same since every speaker has it's own tonal quality that can sound weird when matched with something else, especially for spatial audio setups where a sound might shift from one speaker to another. Another potential issue with using both subs is that they might have different frequency ranges which would make the two subs sound out of sync(for lack of a better term), you might be able to balance them some in that regard if at least one has a cutoff adjustment but how low they go is pretty much down to their individual capabilities. Adjusting overall levels on the two speaker setups to match shouldn't be too difficult but you might find that you have to leave the volume static on both speaker sets once set and adjust volume through windows.

I think you'll likely run into some difficulties and even if you can get it working you might not like the results, then again you might get lucky. You might find that you're better off just using the soundbar setup since it includes rears and a sub and they're all designed to work together.

 

[massX]

So you have 2 sets...the Samsung is a 3.1 system and the THX is a 2.1 system. Together they could technically make a 5.2 system like you want. What soundcard you have now or is it built-in to the MB? That will help us figure out if the software for managing the sound for it can assign it properly. Most likely shouldn't be an issue.

Just a built in realteck on to motherboard.

 

[massX]

There's a couple things I haven't seen anyone address yet. For one the type of connection they use is important since as far as I know windows(10) won't allow you to enable multiple sound outputs so if say the soundbar uses an optical connection and the other uses line level out you might not be able to enable both connections at the same time unless you can find a workaround, if they can both connect to line level outputs that would be the easiest way to hook them both up. I'm going to assume they're both powered speaker sets since most packaged setups are.

There are another couple of issues regarding sound quality to consider too. You generally want to match all your main(non-sub) speakers with ones that sound the same since every speaker has it's own tonal quality that can sound weird when matched with something else, especially for spatial audio setups where a sound might shift from one speaker to another. Another potential issue with using both subs is that they might have different frequency ranges which would make the two subs sound out of sync(for lack of a better term), you might be able to balance them some in that regard if at least one has a cutoff adjustment but how low they go is pretty much down to their individual capabilities. Adjusting overall levels on the two speaker setups to match shouldn't be too difficult but you might find that you have to leave the volume static on both speaker sets once set and adjust volume through windows.

I think you'll likely run into some difficulties and even if you can get it working you might not like the results, then again you might get lucky. You might find that you're better off just using the soundbar setup since it includes rears and a sub and they're all designed to work together.

Thank you thats a lot of information. Much appreciated. I got a lot to toy with.

 

[pendragon1]

Just a built in realteck on to motherboard.

ok. what type of connections are you using? if its the 3.5mm and the sound card is multichannel you might be able to cobble something together as is.