Over the summer I bought some Logitech X-540 surround sound PC speakers. Long story short, though they're great for playing a 5.1 signal coming from a PC, they don't do much for decoding dolby pro-logic II and/or DTS coming from a game console, even when said console is hooked up to the line in on your sound card through S/PDif or TOS-Link.
(For those of you not familiar with the X-540s, there are 3 male/male stereo miniplug cables that go from you sound card to the 3 jacks on the sub woofer, and then 5 RCA jacks in the sub woofer, one for each speaker. The subwoofer acts as an Amp of sorts, and there is a wired remote with a volume nob, on/off button, and matrixing on/off button that sits on your desk.)
So now I'm looking at buying a Dolby receiver proper, possible a Sony STRDG 510. However I don't want to buy new speakers, as I just got some a few months ago. I'm in an apartment so I won't really be able to benefit from awesome speakers anyhow.
Obviously, you can't just plug the stereo mini plugs designed to go into your sound card into the back of a receiver, which is gearing to have the speakers hooked up through speaker wire... so I'm wondering if I can just chop the mini plugs off of the cables that would normally go to the sound card (or replacements, assuming I want to preserve the originals) and hook the wires up to the back of a receiver?
Also to continue to hear PC sound I'd have an S/PDif going from the S/PDif out on my sound card to one of the S/PDif in jacks on the receiver. I should still be able to hear DVDs playing from my DVD-ROM drive, as well as PC games in 5.1 as I can now, right?
I've heard that this should be possible, but I might have to experiment a bit to make sure the speakers are in phase.
Should there be any problems getting accurate Dolby decoding from a game console to my speakers this way? Also what about a SACD player? I plan to get one of those some day.
I guess it's also worth mentioning that my original plan was to get a sound card that supported Dolby for this purpose and use that as a receiver, but it's my understanding that your best bet for that is a Creative X-fi, that you still need some kind of an add on box, and that it will lag so is not ideal for game consoles. I think I read that here in an older topic, actually. Has there been any developments in this area?
(Also if I get a new sound card I'd rather get one with a C-Media chip rather than a Creative.)
(For those of you not familiar with the X-540s, there are 3 male/male stereo miniplug cables that go from you sound card to the 3 jacks on the sub woofer, and then 5 RCA jacks in the sub woofer, one for each speaker. The subwoofer acts as an Amp of sorts, and there is a wired remote with a volume nob, on/off button, and matrixing on/off button that sits on your desk.)
So now I'm looking at buying a Dolby receiver proper, possible a Sony STRDG 510. However I don't want to buy new speakers, as I just got some a few months ago. I'm in an apartment so I won't really be able to benefit from awesome speakers anyhow.
Obviously, you can't just plug the stereo mini plugs designed to go into your sound card into the back of a receiver, which is gearing to have the speakers hooked up through speaker wire... so I'm wondering if I can just chop the mini plugs off of the cables that would normally go to the sound card (or replacements, assuming I want to preserve the originals) and hook the wires up to the back of a receiver?
Also to continue to hear PC sound I'd have an S/PDif going from the S/PDif out on my sound card to one of the S/PDif in jacks on the receiver. I should still be able to hear DVDs playing from my DVD-ROM drive, as well as PC games in 5.1 as I can now, right?
I've heard that this should be possible, but I might have to experiment a bit to make sure the speakers are in phase.
Should there be any problems getting accurate Dolby decoding from a game console to my speakers this way? Also what about a SACD player? I plan to get one of those some day.
I guess it's also worth mentioning that my original plan was to get a sound card that supported Dolby for this purpose and use that as a receiver, but it's my understanding that your best bet for that is a Creative X-fi, that you still need some kind of an add on box, and that it will lag so is not ideal for game consoles. I think I read that here in an older topic, actually. Has there been any developments in this area?
(Also if I get a new sound card I'd rather get one with a C-Media chip rather than a Creative.)