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Express Card sound cards?

post #1 of 5
1/12/10 at 12:43am
Thread Starter 
Hi all,

I'm currently connecting a laptop via DVI to HDMI on a Sony HDTV and wondering how to get better sound than the RCA stereo cable I have. That is, I think I need to purchase either a USB sound card or Express Card slot sound card. I basically don't know what I'm doing and am new to the HTPC thing.
Any suggestions?
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post #2 of 5
1/12/10 at 7:21am
You're using a laptop so there really isn't much you can do with an add-in soundcard or external audio box that would improve your audio.
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post #3 of 5
1/25/10 at 2:01pm
Lex is not correct. I have a laptop connected to a USB hub, and on it is an external USB sound device dongle, with stereo or optical (dolby/dts) out capability as well as Microphone in. These are a cheap $25, and add clarity and ease in turning a laptop into desktop with one (usb) connection. I think I use a Sigg. It also does 5.1 surround decoding for regular headphones, and it's not half bad trying to do so. Also the clarity is better than the output of my laptop.

Good luck.

Edit: if you want for movies find one that does optical, but you'll need a special cable too to hook up to receiver. If it's just to TV, then it's marginal benefits as it's still stereo, but there might be improvement in clarity.
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post #4 of 5
2/5/10 at 12:03am
Thread Starter 
Thanks benananda for the referral to Siig. Looks like they have a couple of USB models that could work for me. I wonder, do you have any audio lag through the device if you load a video on your laptop for playback?
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post #5 of 5
2/22/10 at 1:19am
Thread Starter 
So I found a Zalman ZM-RSSC V2 sound card to connect to my USB port. It works great with Windows 7 because it came with a CD that has Vista drivers. It was actually plug-n-play with stock Microsoft drivers but I installed the Vista drivers because it added a control panel item, DSP effects, and 24 bit / 96 kHz playback. The ZM-RSSC V2 has coax/optical output but I haven't tested that out.

I was able to configure it to decode 5.1 audio on-board to the 3 analog outputs, fronts, rears, center/subwoofer, but it was a confusing process. Setting both the Windows Speaker Setup to 5.1 speakers and the ZM-RSSC V2 control panel item to 6 speakers, while ensuring the playback software was set to 5.1 speakers enabled the 6 analog outputs to output the correct channels.

I think I'll use my Express Card slot for either eSata or USB 3.0 adapter card. Time to test some games!
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