Help with 5.1 surround

C

chrisypea

n00b
Joined
Jan 14, 2008
Messages
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Hi there guys. First of all let me say, I do not have a vast amount of knowledge of audio connections other than stereo so please bare with me.

I am looking to buy the following speakers, mainly as they are the cheapest 5.1 set I have seen and they have good reviews so the quality must at any rate be satisfactory (which is good enough for me).

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/105960

Now, the way I am looking to set this up is to have my PC and DVD player rigged up to these speakers. Now I am aware that it only has one set of input ports so I will buy a switcher for this purpose so I can change it as I need to.

Now (this is where I become unsure), I currently have onboard audio on my PC and I think it can output 5.1. Looking at my manual / back of my PC, it has the standard green 3.5mm stereo jack, a 3.5mm sort of grey/white side surround connector and a 3.5mm orange subwoofer / center connector. As far as I can see from the reviews for the speakers I linked to (the specs of what comes in the box seem very limited), they come with some sort of adapters from 3.5mm jacks to phono connections but I am after some clarification as to whether this would work / output in 5.1.

I have a lot of videos with ac3 surround sound and so my main aim is for that to be outputted in 5.1 through my speakers.

I have no aversion to buying a soundcard if necessary, I was looking at the creative x-fi extreme gamer.

Furthermore, can anybody recommend a reasonably / cheaply priced r2 dvd-player that could output audio to these speakers?

Sorry for the ramble :)
 
You seem to have it sussed, those 3 coloured 3.5mm jacks are the sound outputs to give sound as you described.

As you are using analogue, your PC must decode AC3 etc sound and then output full 5.1 to the amp.
You can either get a soundcard that supports it or use other software to decode it.
FFDshow is very good and also supports decoding of almost any video you will get your mits on.
I use an Audigy 4 which supports AC3 decoding and also have ffdshow and have zero issues.
 
Thanks for the quick reply.

So what you are saying is either to get a sound card that decodes the ac3 or to use software to decode and then output the 5.1 directly to the onboard / soundcard and through to the amp?

I also forgot to mention I want to play DTS audio so any soundcard or software would have to decode this too.

Would a creative x-fi extreme gamer be up to this job? If not well, could you recommend another good value card that would be suitable? Also would you mind please making a recommendation of which software to use (if you had to choose one favourite) + are any of them freeware?

Thanks for the help!
Chris.
 
Yes, the X-Fi is great for the job.
It decodes DTS, so does ffdshow if needed.

ffdshow is the software solution.
 
OK, in that case I guess I will use ffdshow as getting the x-fi seems overkill if my onboard can handle it fine. I have a 2.6ghz dual core setup with 2gb ram so software decoding should be no issue.

Found a super DVD player, I can't get enough of these ebuyer value products :p

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124908

Thanks once again for your help!
 
Correct me if it's been updated, but the x-fi can't decode DTS in vista with it's current driver. :confused:
 
Yeah you will have no problem decoding the sound.
Those DivX DVD players are amazing for how little they cost.
I bought my mum one and she loves it to bits.
Ebuyers my fave place too :)
 
Good to know, alco, however I will be taking the software route anyway so this will not be a problem. Thanks for the heads up though :)
 
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