Output from PC

[Siba]

Hello everyone. I recently ordered a pair of 170SEs for my room, and a Panny XR55 to go along with. My main use for it will be music, movies, and games from my PC. However, the Panny does not have the 3.5mm stereo jacks that are the only outputs from my Audigy 2 soundcard.

Aside from getting the breakout box for the Audigy 2, is there anything else I can do? Maybe some type cable/adapter? I'm trying to keep everything up to the speakers themselves completely digital. I do have a splitter for the 3.5mm stereo > L/R analog that could go into the reciever, but I was hoping to be able to use the digital out for quality purposes, as well as convenience (using the splitter would mean I'd have to reach to the back of my computer every time I needed to use headphones).

It seems to me that I might be looking for a standard digital coax cable that has the two ends needed, but I'm not entirely sure about this.

Also, what kind of options do I have for wiring the speakers to the reciever itself? From reading around a little, most people seem to recommend the OFC cable. I would need about 20 feet of it total, is the cable on the Ascend website good or should I look elsewhere (where if so)?

Any input appreciated, thanks in advance.

[bikeman]

However, the Panny does not have the 3.5mm stereo jacks that are the only outputs from my Audigy 2 soundcard.
Aside from getting the breakout box for the Audigy 2, is there anything else I can do? Maybe some type cable/adapter? I'm trying to keep everything up to the speakers themselves completely digital. I do have a splitter for the 3.5mm stereo > L/R analog that could go into the reciever, but I was hoping to be able to use the digital out for quality purposes, as well as convenience (using the splitter would mean I'd have to reach to the back of my computer every time I needed to use headphones).

I don't believe you can output a digital signal from a mini-jack. It sounds like, and I could be wrong, you need a new sound card that outputs a digital signal.

David

[sensibull]

I don't believe you can output a digital signal from a mini-jack.

Not true. Apparently what you need Siba is a 3.5" mono (mini-jack) > RCA cable. But the Creative drivers make things a little difficult. There's a big thread on this over at ecoustics.com. Here's the most pertinent post. Hope this helps.

"In reference to the original poster, to hook up a SB audigy card to an amplify using the digital output, you just need a cable with an RCA plug on one end, and an 1/8” (3.5mm) mono plug on the other. This cable is usually quit easy to find. You can buy them at dollar atores, audio shops, or can usually find adapters that convert an RCA plug to the 3.5mm jack. The cable itself is pretty much not that important, as digital signals are less prone to “noise”, however severe degradation will result in spotty digital data, and therefore broken sound, so a really crappy cable might cause problems. You can use a coaxial cable, video cable, audio cable, whatever you want to call it, but as long as the physical ends are as mentioned, you are in business. That is the good news.

Now, the bad news. For those of you hoping to hook up your nice fancy sound cards to your nice fancy amplifiers and speaker system, and get all the latest goodies without changing settings/cables etc, forget it. You are SOL. * special case exception. This is not to say that things won’t work, it just means that there is not ONE setup, that will get you everything. This is due to the goofy way these sound cards are set up. Even though your amplifiers may support several different audio signal inputs, and the sound card can also support several different signals, the current implementation won’t allow all your gear to play nice.

If you simply want to get digital audio (5.1), using the above cable, make sure you change your sound card settings to use digital output only(find it yourself), make sure AC3 encoding on your Sb is on (another word for Digital), and make sure you set it up for two speakers (yes, two). If you try to set it to a 5.1 speaker system, you will only get the left and right audio. This is caused by stupid drivers that assume that if you have selected any more than 2 speakers, you must be using the SB as the digital decoder, and outputs the signals via the independent speaker outputs on the card, even though you have specified digital output. The end result is, with the above settings (you might have to tweak your independent configuration) you will get Dolby Digital 5.1 from your sound card, into your amplifier, and it will sound great. However, because you need to set your sound card up as a 2 speaker (stereo) configuration, your computer games will not play in surround modes properly, simply stereo. Few games (if any) support dolby digital, so you will just have to listen to them in stereo. That means Doom 3 is stereo only. Sorry.

* exception. Two possible ways around this, are, to forget about using your amplifier as the Digital decoder, and to hook up the SB card outputs to you amplifier using the individual channel inputs, ie front to front, center to center, rear to rear. If you are lucky your amplifier can do this, and in this case, you turn your sound card digital output off, select a 5.1 speaker setup, and you will hear your movies in 5.1 dolby digital, AND your computer games will also play in surround modes. Of course, for purists, there will be an audio degradation as you will be sending an analog (converted from digital by your sound card) signal to your amp instead of a digital one, and the wiring is much uglier. Plus, you will have to use the SB software to adjust levels, sub cutoff, etc. it also may limit what other gear you can plug into your amplifier as all of the inputs may be used. But it does work. The second, as mentioned by another poster, is to spend gobs of money on a seperate digiatl encoder, and feed your sound card signals into it, then into your amp.

The solution to this, would be if the sound card converted non digital signals (including surround modes) and converted them to dolby digital. Then, you could have it all, but I have not yet found a card that can do this, maybe some day. "

[swank121]

Goodness! I think we are making this way more complicated than it is. From your post, Siba, it appears you only have a stereo setup. I am currently using an Audigy 2 sound card in my HTPC hooked up to an H/K AVR-635 with no problems.

Assuming you have a receiver that can decode PCM as well as Dolby Digital and DTS (and switches on the fly) you CAN connect the digital out from the Audigy 2 straight into the digital input on your receiver and have full surround sound. It is true that the Audigy 2 (or any other PC sound card for that matter with the interesting exception of the nForce2 SoundStorm onboard sound) will not generate a Dolby Digital stream. HOWEVER, it will pass through an existing Dolby Digital stream with no problem (like from a DVD or AC3 file). In order for this to work you must set your sound card for digital output only, 2 speakers, and Dolby Digital decoding on SPDIF passthrough.

Games will be stereo only since they do not create a Dolby Digital signal. If you can live with this, you will have a pure digital connection with surround sound in movies, without any cable swapping or driver nonsense.

It should be noted that the problems pointed out in the ecoustics thread are present with ANY PC sound card, not just the Audigy.

One last point about the cable .. I tried a simple stereo minijack to RCA mono adapter with my Audigy 2 digital output and it didn't work. I had to use a minijack->RCA splitter (like the one you have) and connect only the LEFT channel to the receiver. I'm also using the cheapest RCA cables WalMart carried with no degradation in sound.

As for speaker wire, my belief is that wire is wire. Nearly all copper speaker wire is OFC even if it isn't labelled as such (the oxygen-free part is a byproduct of the iron removal process) For your short run, just use the cheapest 18 gauge you can find. Home Depot carries some great value speaker wire.

[sensibull]

Thanks for the clarification, swank, but if you read the thread excerpt carefully you'll see that you and the quoted poster are saying the same thing. It only gets complicated if you want to preserve surround for gaming...

... and FWIW, I am not an Audigy user. I use a Chaintech AV-710 that is not only a hell of a lot cheaper, but also offers bit-perfect output and automatic switching between 44.1 and 48kHz sources.

[Siba]

Wow, you guys really dug into this. As far as the Audigy drivers go.......I have actually read about this problem before. I never thought I'd live to see the day I really cared about it, though

The solution as I have read is to get a motherboard with the Nvidia SoundStorm on-board audio, one that will encode into a Dolby Digital signal through hardware and output it through SPDIF. Here is the Nvidia page on it: http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_soundstorm.html

I'm considering getting one of these mobos, as I'm currently using the Nforce2 chipset anyway....

Let me know what you guys think of SoundStorm, as it's not planned to keep the hardware Dolby Digital ability in any of the current (Nforce4) motherboards, and has already been scrapped. Maybe we could get some kind of petition up....though there probably is already one. If that's the case I'd like to renew interest in seeing the petition through

[Siba]

Wow, looked around a bit and boards with SoundStorm on them are nowhere to be found

[sensibull]

The solution as I have read is to get a motherboard with the Nvidia SoundStorm on-board audio, one that will encode into a Dolby Digital signal through hardware and output it through SPDIF. Here is the Nvidia page on it: http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_soundstorm.html

Pretty sure any of the new cards with Dolby Digital Live (such as theXPlosion) will offer the same functionality as the SoundStorm.

So you must be a gamer, huh? Because otherwise, none of this stuff matters...

[swank121]

My mistake, sensibull. I read too much into it. From a quick glance it seems they are making a mountain out of a molehill!

Check out the new Dolby Digital Live cards based on the CMedia CMI8768+.
http://www.cmedia.com.tw/product/CMI8768_plus.htm

They do the exact same thing as DICE on the SoundStorm.

Two retail examples:

http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/prod...oddl/specs.asp
http://www.bluegears.com/xmystique.html

If you don't want to drop another $100 on a soundcard, do what I did and hook your Audigy2 up with both digital and analog connections. This has the added benefit of allowing DVD-Audio playback!


edit: bah, sensibull you are too fast!

[Siba]

OK, here's what I've run across for now

This issue is apparently bigger than I thought it was at first, and I'm not the only one that has it. Never thought I'd be in this position..

My mobo right now is an ASUS A7N8X deluxe. It has a Coax SPDIF output on the backplane. I looked at the mobo box and it DOES have the Nvidia SoundStorm and Dolby Digital logos (suhweet!!!).

Another option is this:
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.proc...ductTabDetails
(thanks sensibull and swank)

This card has the ability to encode a Dolby Digital signal in realtime, but would cost me another $100. Can anyone with this card comment on the audio quality and possibly how good the card is for gaming?

I have also considered getting a Creative X-Fi platinum series card. They have only a passthrough option for toslink as far as I know, but my friend said there was a noticeable difference in sound quality compared to his old Audigy.
Would skipping over Dolby Digital entirely, unless it was part of the source material, be a better option in lieu of better sound from the soundcard itself? Does anyone have one of these cards that can maybe add in their opinion? This option would set me back a good $170 at a minimum, which is halfway to another pair of 170SEs. I considered this route because I'd either be using headphones or just the 170SEs I have on the way in anyway, so there's not really much reason for me to want 5.1 sound...

Hmmm....anyone up to sway my opinion for the better?