Compact 5.1 channel receiver for analog PC audio

ChrisWW

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I want to graduate from PC speakers to a more grown-up speaker separates system. Apparently this means I need a "receiver", but all I really want to receive is analog audio in 2 and 5.1 channels. I don't need a DVD player or six HDMI inputs or Bluetooth or 1000 watts of power; I just need to give five satellites and a sub enough juice to fill a 200 sq. foot room, with a volume knob and the option of playing input from a phone or other stereo-only analog signal. If I could pull just the amplifying bits off of something like the Logitech Z506, I'd be happy. I just want the modularity so I have the option of incrementally upping my speaker game.

I'm not afraid of buying used. But I don't want to spend more than $200 or so. Also, ideally I'm looking for something small (in the general ballpark of 12 in x 12 in x 3 in).

Any recommendations, either of new products or discontinued products that I might find on eBay?
 
Buy an old/used receiver with 5.1 analog inputs. The newer the model, the more high end it will need to be to have this feature. Try craigslist. A4L may have refurbs in the 300 range...
 
Crickets here.

Before I bought my Denon AVR-3806, I was also looking for a compact multi-channel amplifier for analog. I mostly game and listen to music, loud and through large speakers. I had an Onkyo AV receiver with 8-channel analog inputs that I was using with my X-Fi card but the Onkyo had developed an issue and I needed a replacement. You can find small stereo amps (smaller than the horizontal area of a DVD case) all day long, but no one seems to make a simple 5 or 7 speaker amplifier. I don't know anything about building electronics, but maybe the power requirements for a multi-channel amp are too high to build something smaller than a typical AV receiver; AV receivers get hot when driving audio and I can only imagine that it would be difficult to dissipate that much heat in a small form factor.

I bought the Denon based on mention of it here when I was researching this same topic; it's an older receiver, but it has analog inputs AND it can independently activate the HDMI on a GPU or motherboard so that audio can be sent to it. I've long since stopped using my X-Fi analog and exclusively use audio through my GPU's HDMI output. I have an annoying second phantom display as a result, but I'm currently using Dual Monitor Tools to lock my mouse to my primary screen. The Denon also has Audyssey, which is so much better at setting speaker levels than me manually setting them through the X-Fi THX configuration.
 
Glad I stumbled across this thread, will be keeping an eye on it. I'm in the exact same boat right now, wanting to piece together a sound system for the computer (Z5500 has moved to the living room for now) and for the time being all I've really managed to find that fit the bill are older receivers (my price range is the same as yours right now... always willing to up it a bit though if it's truly worth it)

Spoke with my Dad about my lack of sound and ended up getting his old 5.1 receiver and speakers from his old living room setup (specs in edit below), but for now, it's honestly working pretty well as a 2.0. My big question is, what am i really missing out on? Sub definitely needed, looking at a BIC American F12 sub to accompany it. Getting it at a buddy special price though, eyeballing it right now, haven't pulled the trigger yet though.

Still though, looking for good recommendations for the comp setup, can always shuffle the above stuff around as needed.

Edit: the two speakers are Advent Baby II's, and a the receiver is a Kenwood KAM-1, eyeballing an F12 BIC Amercan 12" at the moment.

Edit 2: got the try before you buy hookup, can't wait to see how this guy does. Only 2-3 months old before he upgraded to a SVS PB-2000 for his man-cave setup (f12 wasn't enough for his big basement), I'm thinking this is a shoe-in. Will be testing tomorrow when I pick it up after he's off work.

Edit 3: totally apologizing if I'm high jacking this thread OP, will start my own if needed, just looking for bang for the buck solutions like yourself, might have stumbled across one in 1 day...

End result, hoping my pieced together solution provides some insight for ya on this, I can already see the potential of this system surpassing that of a PC-audio AIO thing, damn it sounds pretty good.

Few snaps of the current setup + my demo sub space (receiver soon to be hung on the right side of the desk):

20180126_201939.jpg 20180126_202002.jpg 20180126_214549.jpg 20180126_214612.jpg
 
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Spoke with my Dad about my lack of sound and ended up getting his old 5.1 receiver and speakers from his old living room setup (specs in edit below), but for now, it's honestly working pretty well as a 2.0. My big question is, what am i really missing out on? Sub definitely needed, looking at a BIC American F12 sub to accompany it. Getting it at a buddy special price though, eyeballing it right now, haven't pulled the trigger yet though.

...

Few snaps of the current setup + my demo sub space (receiver soon to be hung on the right side of the desk):


1. I'm a die hard surround sound user because I really enjoy the positional audio in PC games. I don't watch TV/Movies on my PC so gaming is my only use case, but I consider it a major factor in immersion and my enjoyment - not to mention the practical aspect of being more aware of the environment in first person shooters.

2. I'd be careful about putting a receiver on it's side - especially sandwiched in like it seems to be in your picture. Almost all receivers are passively cooled and need space and ventilation to allow the heat to escape through the top of the unit.
 
1. I'm a die hard surround sound user because I really enjoy the positional audio in PC games. I don't watch TV/Movies on my PC so gaming is my only use case, but I consider it a major factor in immersion and my enjoyment - not to mention the practical aspect of being more aware of the environment in first person shooters.

2. I'd be careful about putting a receiver on it's side - especially sandwiched in like it seems to be in your picture. Almost all receivers are passively cooled and need space and ventilation to allow the heat to escape through the top of the unit.

Thanks for the honest feedback DoubleTap, much appreciated. I'm going to be using this strictly for music and maybe for a movie/stream here and there. If I want to game, I use headphones for positional audio.

I haven't been running it for more then 15 minutes at a time, basically just wanted to test it all out before moving to a more permanent solution. I don't have a deep enough desk to get the larger speakers positioned + the receiver up top so it's hanging out down there powered off most of the time. I should also add it's not fully sandwiched, there's 2 inches on either side of the receiver, looks worse in the pics.

So, given my limited space here, I hear you on the passive cooling and need for airflow, something I didn't really consider seeing how they usually get tucked into entertainment centers. How far down from the underside of the desk would you consider adequate for cooling? 3 or 4" of space on top enough? I'm eyeballing something like a wide U shaped bracket to suspend it, then I can run all my wires through the cable basket to keep it all tucked up.

Ideally i'd like to have my headphones plugged into the front of the receiver too for easy access, so I don't have to switch audio sources in Windows.

Or my other option is to shelf the rec + speakers above my monitors, but that'd put them above head level. Not to terrible, but still not ideal.

Thoughts?
 
Thanks for the honest feedback DoubleTap, much appreciated. I'm going to be using this strictly for music and maybe for a movie/stream here and there. If I want to game, I use headphones for positional audio.

I haven't been running it for more then 15 minutes at a time, basically just wanted to test it all out before moving to a more permanent solution. I don't have a deep enough desk to get the larger speakers positioned + the receiver up top so it's hanging out down there powered off most of the time. I should also add it's not fully sandwiched, there's 2 inches on either side of the receiver, looks worse in the pics.

So, given my limited space here, I hear you on the passive cooling and need for airflow, something I didn't really consider seeing how they usually get tucked into entertainment centers. How far down from the underside of the desk would you consider adequate for cooling? 3 or 4" of space on top enough? I'm eyeballing something like a wide U shaped bracket to suspend it, then I can run all my wires through the cable basket to keep it all tucked up.

Ideally i'd like to have my headphones plugged into the front of the receiver too for easy access, so I don't have to switch audio sources in Windows.

Or my other option is to shelf the rec + speakers above my monitors, but that'd put them above head level. Not to terrible, but still not ideal.

Thoughts?

I honestly have no idea what it would take to cause a thermal shutdown on a receiver - I assume it would shut down before sustaining damage but I don't know for sure.

It's going to depend on the room temp and how hard you drive the amp - near field 2 channel listening in a small office seems like a relatively light load and it might be fine but my AVR is always slightly warm when it's just idling.

I'd probably go with the shelf idea personally - you can buy wall mount component shelves for less than $40 (https://www.amazon.com/Mount-MI-802-Component-Playstation4-Projector/dp/B008OBHY2Y)

That one holds about 30lbs - most receivers are under that - mine is huge and still only 28lbs

So that's what I would do, but I try to get everything on it's own mount or bracket...
 
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My AV receiver consumes space on the top of my desk, I've been thinking about looking for something that mounts to the underside of the desk and holds the receiver kinda like how small form factor desktops are sometimes mounted; really only need a couple inches space on the top to maintain airflow.
 
My AV receiver consumes space on the top of my desk, I've been thinking about looking for something that mounts to the underside of the desk and holds the receiver kinda like how small form factor desktops are sometimes mounted; really only need a couple inches space on the top to maintain airflow.

I did that back around 2014: (full gallery at https://imgur.com/a/Jmbxo)

r1IoHbl.jpg


I went through my amazon and newegg order history and couldn't find the product but it's basically an under desk PC mount...
 
Exactly what I'm looking for, and that looks like an adjustable small form factor mount. Will have to do some searching, thanks again man!

As far as the arms and all that goes in your album, that's wild! definitely dig it, I can see how that'd be pretty damn immersive :D
 
If your looking for super compact - you could go with like 3 Topping TP23s. That would be about 5"x6" total. The volumes on the channels wouldn't be ganged though. The TP23 is a 2.0 amp, some other companies sell similar 2.1 setups.

I use a single 25W TP21 for Stereo now, it's been great and it's tiny - 5" wide by 2" tall. The stereo unit is about 5"w x 3"h x 6"d

You would analog input front L/R to one amp, rear L/R to second amp, center channel to third, and either run a self powered sub, or in a pinch you've got a spare channel on the third amp, although it's volume would be slaved to the center so that's hardly ideal as you'd have to software EQ to balance them. But it would give you a very small footprint and flexibility to mount/place it on your desktop in 3 different and smaller pieces, rather than one big receiver.

25-50W would be ideal (in my opinion) for single room - more than that and you will be able to blow the doors off, but you got enough power to drive pretty well any decent speaker set with enough clarity. Just a quick search for 5.1 recievers on amazon shows a good deal that are 12x12x5 or smaller.

Just an idea.
 
If your looking for super compact - you could go with like 3 Topping TP23s. That would be about 5"x6" total. The volumes on the channels wouldn't be ganged though. The TP23 is a 2.0 amp, some other companies sell similar 2.1 setups.

I use a single 25W TP21 for Stereo now, it's been great and it's tiny - 5" wide by 2" tall. The stereo unit is about 5"w x 3"h x 6"d

You would analog input front L/R to one amp, rear L/R to second amp, center channel to third, and either run a self powered sub, or in a pinch you've got a spare channel on the third amp, although it's volume would be slaved to the center so that's hardly ideal as you'd have to software EQ to balance them. But it would give you a very small footprint and flexibility to mount/place it on your desktop in 3 different and smaller pieces, rather than one big receiver.

25-50W would be ideal (in my opinion) for single room - more than that and you will be able to blow the doors off, but you got enough power to drive pretty well any decent speaker set with enough clarity. Just a quick search for 5.1 recievers on amazon shows a good deal that are 12x12x5 or smaller.

Just an idea.

I've wondered why nobody makes a 5-7 ch class D amp for just this purpose but the 2 channel ones are cheap enough that you can do this - as long as you use the PC for volume control, I think it would work OK.

One of the major benefits of using an AVR and HDMI audio is all the sound processing available. If you play stereo music, the AVR uses it's DSP to manage the bass and HPF your main speakers and send LPF audio to your sub.

The problem with using discrete channel output from a PC is that when you play music, it will only go to the L/R speakers and it won't use your sub unless you have some extra hardware/software to manage the bass.

Even if you use an AVR with analog inputs, most of them become "dumb" in that mode and won't do much/any sound processing or bass management - so the easiest thing for me (and probably most people) to do is switch back to optical for music - now you're back in digital mode and the AVR can manage your bass and you have all the other features available to you.



Exactly what I'm looking for, and that looks like an adjustable small form factor mount. Will have to do some searching, thanks again man!

As far as the arms and all that goes in your album, that's wild! definitely dig it, I can see how that'd be pretty damn immersive :D

Yes, that's what it is - it's hard to see in the pic, but that mount is only attached on the left side - so the whole receiver was putting leverage on the anchor and since my desk is motorized, I worried that the up/down motion could be enough to break something loose. If you look closely, you can see a steel strip on the right that I bent and used to hold up the right side of the receiver and keep it from flopping around (peace of mind!) It was just enough to hold that side up and flexible enough to bend out of the way if I needed ti take the AVR out.

The retractable rear speaker arms were a really fun project and they worked very well - no issues really but when I moved, I had a smaller office with a better shape and I just decided to wall mount the surrounds.

The actual idea was based on an old Creative Labs product called the "Surround Station" - I just expanded on the idea...
 

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The problem with using discrete channel output from a PC is that when you play music, it will only go to the L/R speakers and it won't use your sub unless you have some extra hardware/software to manage the bass.

False. Windows Bass Management redirects low frequencies to the sub channel when you have it set correctly.
 
False. Windows Bass Management redirects low frequencies to the sub channel when you have it set correctly.

I'm using the Xonar U7 MkII and I can't find a bass management setting to do that - it does seem that you're supposed to use the speaker config but that seems to be disabled on the U7.
 
I've been using 5.1 and analog connections nonstop for over a decade and every time I get a new rig setting the bass management so I get subwoofer output with music is the first thing I do. Sometimes it ends up being a pain in the ass depending what audio hardware I'm running but I haven't yet had a system where it's impossible. That said, it may be impossible with the Xonar as I've never used one, but it'd be a pretty shitty/stupid thing for Xonar to do.
 
I've been using 5.1 and analog connections nonstop for over a decade and every time I get a new rig setting the bass management so I get subwoofer output with music is the first thing I do. Sometimes it ends up being a pain in the ass depending what audio hardware I'm running but I haven't yet had a system where it's impossible. That said, it may be impossible with the Xonar as I've never used one, but it'd be a pretty shitty/stupid thing for Xonar to do.

I was running the onboard 7.1 analog out - I think the bass management is related to what kind of speakers you tell it you have - I tried different settings and never got it to work right with music and there are a lot of other people in the internet struggling to make it work as well.

MS Mentions it here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/audio/bass-management

I'm unable to access the settings they describe.

Here are others having issues:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...0/d61ea401-3973-4811-9a20-21e7ad66c1a8?page=2

Excerpt:
Yep. More to the point, I have no way of trying the methods presented because all of those options vanished. After the Windows 10 upgrade, there was no "Advanced Audio Enhancements" to unselect; no enhancements options anywhere at all, leaving me no way of enabling Bass Management. Instead I have this lovely "Dolby" tab with an on/off switching option that seems, as far as I can tell, to make no difference of any kind. I have a laptop and another Desktop machine, and both of these still had enhancements after the upgrade, including Bass Management. It has occurred to me that this may be related to the driver from Gigabyte, but the problem persists even after reverting to the older driver. At this point, I suspect my only option is to use the configure option and go back to stereo mode, then use the crossover built into my subwoofer... that or wait for a driver update in the future that MIGHT correct the problem.

I really like the ASUS Xonar U7 but the lack of bass management really holds it back from being ideal - from what I've been able to read, it almost sounds like some of the features have been cut or maybe I need to install an extra app - the old U7 used to have some Dolby Theater app - my guess is that it had bass management...

Edit: Nope, looks like Sonic Studio replaces the Dolby Theater V4 app and does about the same thing.

The ROG forums are full of people complaining about the lack of bass management and telling each other how to use Equalizer APO - which is fine but it's a pain...
 
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Windows bass management seems to depend on the audio driver or speaker configuration settings. My work computer (I think it has Realtek) has a bass management option in the audio device properties under the Enhancements tab but I can't test it. My X-Fi card doesn't have the Enhancements tab, but the Creative THX setup program has a bass redirection option with a crossover slider that doesn't work unless you tell Windows that you don't have full-range speakers in the speaker configuration.
 

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I've wondered why nobody makes a 5-7 ch class D amp for just this purpose but the 2 channel ones are cheap enough that you can do this - as long as you use the PC for volume control, I think it would work OK.

On PA side 4-6 x 75w per channel amps are available for a reasonable cost, for example Behringer EPQ304.
 
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On PA side 4-6 x 75w per channel amps are available for a reasonable cost, for example Behringer EPQ304.

Not sure 4 channels would cover it and most PA amps have fans. I'm sure you could make one work, but given that little 2ch 50W Class D amps are so cheap, I think running 3-4 would be as good as anything else.

The other option is using powered monitors:

 
Those cheap 50W d-class amps often do not hold their promises, they're in reality 10-30w amps. I would go for powered monitors definitely instead.
 
Meant to post this a while ago but here's how you do it with my current system. This is with on board sound. If you've got a separate soundcard that won't allow you to enable a sub for two channel music then, well, uh...

https://imgur.com/L5zsQus
 
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