Nu7s

Hello all,

Since I'm moving soon I got myself into a little project: I want to play PC games with full surround sound on my TV that is located in a other room then my PC is. I came up with the following configuration:




I bought myself the "Creative Soundblaster X-Fi 5.1" USB soundcard because it featured the "TOSLINK" optical output. Creative Product Page

But only to find it only submitted 2.0 sound from the optical output.

After some research I came across the "Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect Pack" located at the Soundblaster Shop, thinking my problems were over I went ahead and bought it. Installed it and it did enable passthrough of Dolby Digital and DTS signals, but still no 5.1 audio from games.

What I also found were the redocneXk realtime 5.1 decoder wich I can't seem to get to work and the kX Drivers wich can't be installed because "No supported soundcards can be found".

What I wanted to know is the following:

- Is there ANY way I can get 5.1 Dolby/DTS sound from games through the SPDIF output using this external USB card?

- If not, are there ANY external USB cards wich feature dolby/DTS conversion so I can play my games with surround?

- Is there a way I can use the normal RCA outputs to hook up to my Onkyo TX-SR507

- And If all else fails, is there a other simple way to transfer multichannel audio from one room to another?

Thanks for reading,

Hoping for a usefull answer,

Nu7s

Tril

HDMI can be used to transfer both video and audio at the same time. I don't know what's your video card but mine is a ATI HD 4850. I took a look at the product webpage here. It says :
In the Windows sound setting, I have a device called "ATI HDMI Output". If I choose that for the sound and connect my pc to an HDTV with a HDMI cable and setup the video to output through HDMI, I'll get both video and sound on the HDTV. That's what I would do, if it works. If the sound is not already encoded, I don't know if it will encode it to support multi-channel sound. I don't have all the hardware to test this.

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cause_of_chaos

I'd recommend looking into Trill's HDMI solution first as 1 cable is better than 2!.

Also, your going to need signal boosters for the VGA and USB cables if you're planning to stretch them from room to room. Actually, you're probably going to need a signal booster for whatever solution you go for.

An cable greater than 2m or so will require a booster or you will experience drop-out / interference / decreased quality.

I hope you find a solution though as it sounds interesting!

cause_of_chaos

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AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition @ 3.4Ghz
4Gb Crucial Ballistix PC2 8500 ~ 800 FSB {Timings 4-4-4-12}
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe CrossfireX Mobo ~ 2002 Bios
MSI ATI RX3870 512Mb PCI-e 2.0 Graphics card
Creative Audigy2 ZS Platinum Sound card (SB0350 10k2 [e800])

Nu7s

Hi guys,

Thanks for the help, I've been looking into your solution and decided to go for it. I bought myself a ASUS ATI Radeon 5750 1GB card. I just hope I won't see a performance-drop on my system because at the moment I'm running 2 NVIDIA 8800GT 512mb cards in SLI.

And maybe in a few weeks I'll replace the motherboard, processor and memory.

Thanks for the help again and let's hope for the best!

Greetings,

Nu7s

dj_stick

for games, you'll need to use the analogue connections (you'll probably get slightly better sound that way if you use decent cables)

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Nu7s

Problem with the analog connectors is that I can't connect these to my reciever. Only HDMI/OPTICAL & COAX connections are available:

http://www.cepro.com/images/uploads/large_tx_sr507.jpg

Nu7s

Sorry for the double post, but I have just installed the new ATI and i'm loving it. Performance is even better then my two Nvidia cards togheter.

Thanks for the help guys, this resolves my problem!

Tril

You tried the audio through HDMI and it worked? Does it only work with DVD or does it also work with games?

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Nu7s

Works great with everything. My reciever detects "multichannel audio" as soon as there is.