On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 8:23:55 PM UTC-8, W wrote:
"Audio_Empire" wrote in message
...
On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 6:56:40 AM UTC-8, W wrote:
What is the best way to feed a Windows PC sound system to a receiver? The
intent is to have one receiver be shared by multiple PCs, as well as by an
audiophile quality Bluray. I want to have a high end 5.1 or 7.1 setup, but
I also want the PC to be able to use Windows DirectX sound interface to
directly control all five channels. Games played on Windows systems use
DirectX to control the individual sound channels.
There are systems like the Creative DDTS-100 that solve this problem very
well, but this box wants to feed PC speakers. It cannot work with
audiophile quality speaker systems. If I go with a true audiophile
receiver, do I lose the ability to have the PC control individual sound
channels? If for example I feed an optical audio cable from the PC sound
card to the receiver, it cannot encapsulate the 5.1 sound into a known
format like DTS 5.1.
It seems to me what you really want is a receiver that can take as direct
input the individual channel cables from the PC sound card? Does such a
receiver exist? Is there a better way to achieve what I am looking for
here?
If I understand you, you want to take multiple optical digital audio
output from multiple PCs, a gaming console, and a Blu-Ray player and
feed it to an A/V receiver with built-in Dolby Digital and DTS
decoding. If so, you will want some- thing like this:
http://www.cablestogo.com/product/40697
This is the recommended method. However, if you want to transfer AUDIO
in 5.1 or 7.1 channels, a switch that will transfer 6 or 7 channels of
discrete audio at once is a tall order and not really necessary
because with virtually all current A/V receivers, it's redundant. Only
the digital signal needs to be transferred from the computers and the
gaming console and the Blu-Ray player as the decoding for all is done
in the receiver.
Coaxial digital may be a better way to transfer the 5.1/7.1 digital
audio signal from your sources to your A/V receiver. In that case, you
can use one of these:
http://tinyurl.com/awfupt6
At $17.00 each, you merely use the the 4 video RCA inputs (the yellow
ones) for the coaxial digital, and if you need more than 4 into 2, you
can cascade these boxes to obtain the number of sources you need. I.E.
1 box gives you four sources, 2 in series give you seven, three give
you 10 sources. etc.
Maybe this is my misunderstanding, but a PC game under Windows wants to
control the individual sound channels directly. Are suggesting that by
feeding the soundcard outputs to the analog RCA connections on the switch
you are showing, and then passing those to the receiver, it will give an
identical result to directly attaching PC speakers to the sound card?
No, If the output of your sound card is digital (either coaxial with
an RCA jack, or optical with a Toslink output, then you would want
either of the two switch boxes above. If you are transferring 5.1 or
6.1 channels of AUDIO, then I know of NO switchboxes that will allow
that (can you imagine the tangle that 24 cables for 5.1 stereo audio
would make?
And presumably using three separate RCA cables from the sound card would
preserve more of the 5.1 dimensionality than using a single optical audio
Please understand the optical cable is most likely NOT analog audio,
It's DIGITAL audio out, It needs ro go to the digital audio IN on your
A/V receiver and one digital optical or coaxial cable will carry all
six 5.1 or all eight 7.1 channels over a single cable.
cable from the soundcard? My concern is that optical cables normally work
only when passing a bitsream that needs decoding at the receiver. To my
understanding, a PC game isn't using DTS or Dolby bitstream at all. It's
using the "DirectSound" interface which directly manages individual sound
channels. So I am not clear on how the PC would combine the 5.1
information onto the optical channel, nor am I clear on how the receiver
would deal with it. I assume it would just be PCM? Would that set the
signal to the same information for all five channels?
Sounds to me like you are out of luck with your gaming console if it
only provides analog audio out. Then you'll have to provide enough
stereo cables to go from the surround outputs of your game console to
the discrete 5.1 or 7.1 inputs on your receiver. Most modern A/V
receivers have at least one set of discreet audio inputs. Otherwise,
the rest of your system will be best served comnnected digitally with
a single digital cable.