Recommend me a Audio system

[Frostex]

So here's my setup, I have a PC in my living room where a TV would be, I use this PC for lots of different things from work to gaming and watching all my entertainment which includes music and video such as DVD movies etc, it's all running on a fast box piped throuh the Dell 30" WFP-HC monitor.

It's a nice setup but I need some decent audio, currently I'm running onboard sound which provides me with 5.1 surround sound through my Creative Inspire speakers, which is a nice but pretty low quality sound setup.

Ideally what I'd like to get is a home theatre sound system which I can listen to radio on, play CD's, but also hook up to my PC and pipe all my sound through it, so I would listen to music straight from my PC and play games through it, watch movies etc.

I'd pref)erably like to do this without buying a new high quality soundcard to go with it, I've read a few of the systems have USB support, ideally what i'd like to do is plug in via USB and simply have the OS (Vista 64bit) detect the kit as a sound device it can send sound straight to, very much like my Sennheiser headphones (these have a usb connection with it's own built in sound device) but I don't really know enough about these home theatre systems if when they list USB support that's in fact what they do!

My current onboard sound is just 3 jacks output which is FrontLeft/FrontRight - RearLeft/RearRight - Centre/Sub. It seems like it would be waste of money to get nice high quality speakers and have the source for the audio be onboard sound.

So can anyone please enlighten me? Is there anything out there which provides such features or am I going to be stuck buying a soundcard which has a HDMI output or something stupid like that?

Ideally I dont want to spend more than £500 GBP ($1000 USD) and obviously the kit has to be available in the UK. If it can't be used to send sound straight to and I need a new soundcard that will have to be included in the price.

This is the sort of thing I'd like to run with, as an example (although doesn't list USB support)

http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...ageType=Main&category=HCS+Cinema+Surround+Kit

Any help GREATLY appreciated, cheers!

 

[Deleted member 89018]

Well, if your onboard sound had a digital audio output, you could use that to connect to a receiver and bypass the DAC of the onboard audio. Without it though I can understand the desire to not have to deal with the analog outputs of the built-in audio.

I I haven't seen receivers that will plug in via USB and show up as an audio device in Windows. I remember seeing some that could do this over firewire but they were hideously expensive at the time (this was a year or so ago), I seem to recall prices above $1,000.

Some receivers with USB ports at B&H Photo

From what I can tell, those Onkyo models only have USB ports so that a device containing media (flash drive with MP3s, for example) can be connected for playback. So those are out (kind of silly that they cost so much and don't have that feature, if you ask me).

I'm looking at the manual for the JVC listed on that page (RX-D702B). It has wireless USB built in and includes a transmitter you can connect to a PC; it also has a USB port so you could connect it with a regular USB cable. It looks like it sets up as its own audio device, not making use of others in the system, so it seems to be exactly what you're after. However, the manual doesn't say anything about Vista compatibility. Assuming it's a standard setup, though ("USB Audio Device" is how it is listed, doesn't seem to be device-specific to the receiver) it might work okay.

Have you considered an inexpensive but decent sound card with a regular digital output? The Chaintech AV-710 comes immediately to mind, although they're much harder to find now than they once were... and to tell the truth I have no idea how well one would function under 64-bit Vista.