Stupid Receiver Question

[Zenshi]

Sorry for the stupid noob receiver question but I needed to get something clarified. I just purchased a Marantz SR5001 receiver to hook up onto my PC. Until I get decent bookshelves, I plan to run this with the cheapo Yammie active PC speakers and the Hsu STF-1 active sub. Originally I was connecting the Yammies to the LR Front out of the analog 7.1 output of the HT Omega Striker card and connecting the STF-1 to the sub-out connector of Yammie.

With the Marantz, I was originally going to connect the optical output of the Striker to the Optical input of the Marantz and connect the LR pre outs of the Marantz to the Yammie and the LFE pre outs to the STF-1. The Marantz tech suggested rather than connect the optical connection, to rather connect the LR Front analog 7.1 output of the Striker to the LR Front of the 7.1 pre in of the Marantz, and then connect the LR pre outs of the Marantz and the LFE pre outs to their respective speakers as originally planned. That way, if the card only had 5.1 channel DTS output, I would not have problems due to the lack of a center. This turned out to work and I was enjoying the system.

However, recently I was warned by someone that going out the 7.1 channel analog output of the sound card is an amplified signal and if it was connected to the 7.1 channel pre-ins of the Marantz, it would hurt the receiver since the amplified signal would be too high for the 7.1channel input.

I am not sure which is the case as the Marantz tech seemed to suggest this to be ok, and the 7.1 ch output from the Striker normally connects ok with active speakers that itself are self amplified. Is this going to cause a problem and if so, where should I be connecting the soundcard to the receiver?

TIA and sorry for the noob question.

 

[obobski]

I'd pretty much ignore whatever genius told you the soundcard has a speaker level amp and that you're blowing your Marantz up, the output from that card is going to be more or less in-line with anything else considered "average" as a source component (like a VCR or Blu-ray player)

I'd also go with the digital connection because you'll know if the card is going to drive a 5.1 DTS signal or not, and a lot of receivers don't have crossover/DSP features available using their multi-ch analog line inputs (if yours does, you may disregard this), the other feature of having the digital connection is AC-3 would be output to the receiver, and it could re-process things to stereo + sub, there shouldn't be any difference in output between doing it this way and the HT Omega taking AC-3 to stereo, but you never know (I'm saying that software could screw things up, nothing to do with hardware here)

I'd either go with your original set-up, or listen to the Marantz tech, both are correct ways of connecting this

 

[Zenshi]

Thanks obobski! Was kind of afraid of listening to the system for awhile but now I can go enjoy it again.

Appreciate your help with this and will try out the digital input in a few days.