Need Help with Surround Options!

E

edifyingkarma

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 8, 2008
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Hey All,

I have the X-fi Elite pro which I purchased at a modest price expecting exceptional quality from it. IT SUX! Creative SUX!, they can all go to hell as far as I am concerned.

I have heard whispers of bypassing hardware sound cards all together and processing your sound from a receiver. If this is true, I am wondering about my options as far as receivers and speakers sets are concerned. Im hoping for a 7.1 capability in the receiver possibly settling for a 5.1 set of speakers. Fidelity is Very important to me as I play games, Watch HD movies, and Listen to music all with my pc.

Thanks ahead of time for all inputs.

Edi
 
To bypass a soundcard you need digital output, which means you need whats called a "transport card." A cheap one for around $20 would be the Chaintech AV-710 or the Mad Dog Entertainer. A higher quality one would be the M-Audio Revolution, i consider it a better transport card because it has more output sampling rates (88.2KHz and 176.4KHz) although for most people this is not a dealbreaker, only if you are really anal about oversampling CD audio.

As far as receivers and speakers, what is your budget? For example you would need to budget for speakers, for receiver, for sound card (and some more for cabling such as speaker wire)
 
Yes, Creative sux but the card sounds fine to me. Make sure you've got it turned over to 'audio authoring mode' or whatever it is called. The thing does not sound nearly as good in 'entertainment' or 'game' mode. Also turn off all the EAX/Crystalizer/Surround gimmickry, as it does nothing beneficial to the audio either.

How is it hooked up to your other gear now?
 
One of the biggest reasons why I wish to bypass the sound card is the support factor for all of my modes of entertainment. I mean for craps sake, a $300 card isnt fully supported in vista!, that is the dumbest stuff I have ever heard of in my life.

Another BIG reason is the fact that finding a quality set of speakers designed for the computer directly is a hard thing indeed. I wouldnt considered myself an audiophile enthusiast, but i do thoroughly enjoy tweeking with the equalizations to make my music just so.

It is the opinion of mine that you need to bypass the realm of computer periferrals to achieve a high quality home theater set up. Computer speakers just dont live up to the competition in home theater.

My budget is around $1000 for everything. I dont have to have the best but i most definitely want across the board compatability as far as decoding goes.

So hopefully this will help you help me make a decision.


Edi
 
The X fi Elite Pro has a very fine DAC/anolog sound, and full EAX (5) for gaming via analog connection. You would be hard pressed to find better for those purposes. What are your purposes, and the connections/speakers being used? You're saying that the X Fi Elite sucks, tells me that you are lost; and we can't help w/o knowing your usages/needs, sound system specs, budget requirements, etc.
 
Well rblews, one of the biggest issues i have ran into is the fact that games play back with some pretty unbarable static and will even screech horribly from time to time to the point that i have to restart program. Movies play back pretty well though I experience static there as well. I am using a pair of headphones (Aurvana lives) hooked directly to the card. Onboard sound is disabled completely. I current dont have a surround set up just some lower quality 2.1s. Right now I use the headphones only. I gone across all the settings and modes in audio console and nothing has provided an explanation.

Like I said before, I do absolutely everything from my pc. Games, Movies, Music, I do it all from one location. I was hoping to process audio with more efficiently.

$1000 budget

Edi
 
Well alot of people dislike the X-Fi for other reasons you listed...sounds like you are just being inconvenienced by bad drivers or dud hardware.

Generally the X-Fi gets a bad rep because of its internal resampling of all sources to 48Khz...this does raise the noise floor on higher quality recordings. The DAC is nice, certainly above average although I dislike using sound cards as low level pre-amps, the noise level really gets amplified from one part of the chain to the next...honestly eliminating the sound card as a processor to me has plenty of benefits if the DAC/DSP are at least equal on the next part of the chain.

For your purposes since you play games you do need a card that can do Dolby Digital Live encoding since digital signals only carry stereo (PCM) or compressed multichannel sound (MCPCM). In the abscence of a compression format that a receiver can decode like Dolby Digital or DTS, all you get is stereo through the digital input.

My impression is since you are using this as HTPC your number of input sources will be quite limited. I think you are a prime candidate for the Panasonic SA-XR57--I've got one I use for my bedroom setup, it's nice and small, produces minimal heat, is very power efficient, and has an excellent DAC/DSP/amplification synergy. It utilizes Equibit Class-D amplification which is one of the many "digital" amplification technologies that are low on power lost to heat, and are very good at sending power to the speakers with very little input power loss (about 3-4 times more efficient than standard Class A/B amplifiers). The main reason I bought this receiver a few years ago was that it measures competitively with analog receivers twice the cost or more--and the main reason is, the amp section of analog receivers cost a lot to make. Basing on my memory of the Sound & Vision measurements, amp distortion were very good, and the DAC's bit error/noise modulation were also extremely good for the price ($300). All you would need here is a Dolby Digital Live capable sound card with a digital cable straight into this baby.

As far as speakers, I would get a 5 speaker + sub combo deal which should do very well for you until (if) the day came and you wanted better front channels for various reasons.

Now before any recommendations for the speakers + sub, what are your size constraints?

Be warned though, for $700 for 5 speakers + sub the options are a little limited if you want high quality across all the speakers. What I personally did at first was get a pair of speakers and receiver. Every couple of months I would add a new component, like a sub, or other speakers to fill out the setup. It could be something you could consider, especially as you say, your PC is your entertainment center and putting a long-term plan into it could be more rewarding.

As far as what your size constraints are, if you have plenty of size for larger speakers all around, then 5 bookshelf sized speakers would be optimal. If you have less space you could go with 2 bookshelves for fronts and then satellites for rears. And the most space conscious scenario would obviously be full satellite based setup. As far as HTPC's go, I prefer no center channel, its kind of hard finding a place for a center channel unless you hang it from the wall and looks obtrusive either way. Your call.
 
Wow man, you seem to really know what you are talking about :). I checked out the receiver and it is a definite as it looks to be just what I need. Any recommendation on a sound card?

As far as speakers go, I have a large room with enough space to put just about any system I could conceivable want in it. So size is not a problem. Keep in mind that my max budget is 1000. So recommend away :)

So you are saying that I would just need a DDS capable card with digital connection straight into the receiver and i would be rocking my world?
 
Well I would skip the center channel personally, spend $700 on speakers that have good bass output and get a sub later if you really have the need. Reducing it to 4 speakers makes it much more manageable for high quality speakers.
 
You could also skimp on the rears really they don't have to be high end monitors, you want your front left/right to be the highest quality.

You can get these for $100/pair as surrounds:

http://www.fluance.com/fluanbipsurs.html

After that you can essentially allocate $600 to 2 speakers (or 2 and a sub).
 
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