[5.1] Setting up a surround system for my computer. [ Looking for highly knowledgeable individual...

Let's back up a bit. What are your speakers? Are they actively powered or do you have a multichannel amp?

You need an amplifier of some sort. I would assume given that your talking about lossless output your planning to buy 'real' speakers and a sub, that is, your not using some off the shelf logitech system or something. Realistically the most cost effective way to get a quality 5 channel amplifier is to buy an AV receiver. Alternatively you can get 5 studio monitors that have the amps built in.

I'm not sure what the goal here is, since you probably need external amplification anyway, you would probably just want to feed the audio into the receiver. That said you can get sound cards with 6+ channels of input. M-audio makes several but they are targeted at music recording work since there isn't really a reason to bring 6 channels into a computer otherwise. I don't know of any that are really designed such that you can pass the channels straight though easily in the case of using monitors, I'm sure you can do it but doubt its the most user friendly thing in the world as its very uncommon.

Not necessarily, but as mentioned, you pretty much need a receiver for amplification anyway.

The question is which device takes the raw encoded audio from the source (blueray or video file) and converts it to the 6 independent channels. If you use 6 analog outputs, the sound card (well, really your computers CPU is doing it) has to do this. If you stream it out HDMI on the other hand, its usually the receiver that does the decoding, although its possible to decode it on the computer and stream it out as PCM via HDMI (or other digital method) also. There really isn't any advantage to one vs the other unless your chosen software on your compute can't decode the given format, which can be an issue as some formats are proprietary and require a licence to implement.

Most multichannel sound cards have a digital out via either SPDI/F (optical) or a digital RCA link. Its probably easiest to use this connection vs HDMI and won't effect quality.

Now, you've mentioned games a lot, they do their own thing to generate the multiple channels, you don't need to worry about what device is decoding the audio in this case, its being generated as 6 channel in real time (although perhaps some games may generate DD). So whatever you do you need to get 6 channels out of the sounds card. This is another place where HDMI is a bad idea. I doubt your can have your sound blaster blah blah sound card do its thing helping out with 3D game sound then pump the output back out through the HDMI (via video card) connection. Maybe but sounds messy to me.

HDMI, Analog, Optical, whatever you use - you still need to provide POWER (amplification) to the speakers. These are your options:

• 5.1 analog from soundcard to 5 channel amplifier to the 5 speakers, and (dot)one to the subwoofer's amplifier.
• Same as above, but instead of just an amplifier you get a receiver with analog inputs (the receiver is ALSO an amplifier)
• Digital out of the soundcard to digital input of receiver (receiver need not have multichannel analog inputs in this case). Pick your flavor of digital: HDMI, optical, or digital coax

By "Real" speakers I believe he means not some 5.1 in a box logitech PC surround thing. Usually such things are self powered (ie. need no amplifier), but they are likely to be underwhelming in performance.

In a 5.1 setup the five goes to the 5 speakers (left, right, center, and two surrounds) the ".1" goes to the subwoofer. Almost always, a subwoofer will have it's own amplifier built in. So a 5 channel amp, plus a self-powered subwoofer.

I'm not saying that all speakers with built-in power are bad. Most studio monitors are self-powered and there are a great many very good studio monitors. But yes, if you mean a little 2.1 computer dkeptop set, it would be powered because most folks can't be bothered with external amplifier/receivers and are fine with the sound quality and abilities of such. TBH, a 5.1 in a box might be just the right thing for you. Let's step back a little bit and find out.

This is all going to be for computer gaming with a little movies and music, yes? Where are you planning to mount the surround speakers? I know you are set on a soundcard with analog outputs - but do you already HAVE it? Have your eye on one? How far away are you going to be sitting from the front speakers? I'd like to hear your goals and your setup a little bit, and from there I can help make some recommendations.

In general:

You need something to generate audio, whether it be a game or a cd drive or a program that plays .wav files or a blu-ray player or whatever

You need something to process that audio into one low level stream for each channel (speaker), whether that be your sound card or a processor or a receiver

You need something to amplify those low level streams into high level streams that speakers can actually play, whether that be a receiver or a bunch of single channel amplifiers or a five channel power amp or amplification stages inside of powered monitor speakers. An active subwoofer can basically be considered to be like a gigantic powered monitor speaker that only plays deep notes.

You need speakers to play those amplified streams

You have a few options, but you need to cover all of those bases one way or another.

Almost all do, even the cards built into most motherboards have 6 channel analog output. The jack is usually a 1/8" stereo due to space constraints so if you want to use RCA cables for some reason instead of 1/8" cabling you just need to grab an adaptor.

Sound cards can't provide enough power to drive speakers directly. Usually only 2 channels of its output can even drive headphones with enough power. The 2.1/5.1 off the shelf systems usually have the power amp for all channels built into the subwoofer. However, invariably such systems are complete crap acoustically, but are an easy way to solve your problem, just buy a set and plug it into the digital or analog outputs of your sound card, whatever the system supports.

I mean quality speakers that aren't the 2.1 or 5.1 computer speaker package deals you can get from Logitech, Creative, etc.

Why? The digital coax or SPDI/F connections are the easiest to use.

If I were going to do that, I'd buy whatever near field speakers I want, whatever receiver I want, whatever sound card I want and connect the sound card to the receiver with a digital coax cable or SPDI/F, whichever my sound card supported.

What I personally would do if gaming were my primary concern, is buy a good set of headphones and a decent headphone amp and set my sound card to headphone mode for 3D positioning. You'll get far better positional cues this way than you will from putting 5 speakers each 3 feet from your head.

Yes - analog from the sound card to the receiver/amp and subwoofer. It would sure be easier if you could connect a single HDMI cable to a receiver. It seems that it would work in some cases, but some brief reading suggests that you may not get proper surround from all games. In some cases, the games can bitstream TrueHD or DTS-HD, but others cannot and you may end up unsatisfied with the result. Further reading on this would be prudent, as this would be the SIMPLEST course of action.

But assuming that won't work, you need to find yourself a receiver with multichannel analog inputs. This is not found on every receiver, but fortunately for you it is more common than multichannel analog pre-outs.

Please review my earlier questions. What is your layout like? How far will you be from the speakers? Where are the surrounds going to be mounted?

What's your budget for speakers, receiver/amp, and subwoofer?

While these guys are technically correct you'll never hear the difference, you'd have to have golden ears to tell the difference testing in a perfect room with $50,000 in speaker equipment.

Don't worry about what is or isn't lossless.

Since this is all hypothetical, here are some minimum numbers for quality sound:

Computer audio interface - what is already in the computer? You may already have all that you need!

Receiver - $250-350

Speakers - $800-900, or $500-600 for the main speakers, and $200-300 for the subwoofer.

You may want to set aside some money ($300-500) for acoustic room treatments, acoustical measuring setup, etc.

OK, does that give you a good or bad feeling in your tummy?
Edited by arnyk - 1/11/13 at 11:52am

He didn't forget the sound card, just called it a "computer audio interface".

In order of importance for sound quality:

1/2) Speakers / Room Acoustics (which gets first depends on how bad the acoustics of your room are)

and way down on the importance scale are

3) Electronics (receiver, amps, etc)
4) Source Material Encoding (lossless vs lossy)

You can have $50,000 speakers but if your listening room is highly reflective and has a lot room modes, it'll still sound like crap. You need the measurement equipment to locate the issues and room treatments to mitigate them. Electronics like Audyssey help some with this but they can't correct for a 25db null at your listening position.

It depends on what you have. If you have 2 good speakers and a good sub, thats a start. The sound card may not matter much. The difference between the analog performance of on board sound cards and higher end models is often negligible. The difference when using the digital output is non existant for all intents and purposes. Very few games use ESX or hardware 3D accelerated sound anymore so that is really a minimal-issue.

Toslink or digital coax

speaker wire

unlikely but maybe, have to know the final devices first.

HDMI ports on computers are 'run' by the GPU. The sound has to be passed to the GPU driver to get it into the HDMI stream.

Can you give me a link to one of the sound cards you are considering? It'll be easier to work with something more concrete.

If you are going from a 5.1/7.1 analog output from a soundcard you will need either:

A) a multichannel amp + powered subwoofer, or B) an AVR with multichannel analog inputs + powered subwoofer

Either of the above will be connected with:

RCA inputs to the amp or receiver, and suitable connectors to plug into the soundcard. Maybe RCA, or maybe 3.5mm (in which case you can use something like this), or make your own cables, or search for such cables. Or maybe it will have stereo 3.5mm jacks, in which case you could use something like this.

I haven't used a desktop PC for years, so I'm really not up on this stuff. That's why it would be easier to help if you could throw out a few of the soundcards you are considering? Lot's of guesswork without that.

You seem pretty stuck on this and I'm not sure why. The audio is coming from a digital source to begin with. It is going to be turned to analog somewhere, and there's really no benefit to having that take place inside the computer vs in an AVR, unless your games won't bitstream the audio formats you want in this manner*. If you can verify with other gamers that passing in-game surround audio via HDMI is a viable option, then I'd see NO reason to mess with 5 or 7 analog cables coming out the back of your computer.

*even if they only pass the DTS or Dolby "core" (if it works that way in games), I'd still opt for a receiver with either optical or HDMI connection.

If you want to play the analog purist game, your better off starting with an analog source, and that rules out videogames. With digital audio you gain nothing by converting to analog sooner rather than later on in the chain.

There is usually an SPDI/F cable inside the computer that connects to the GPU to the sound card. Should have come with your video card. In some cases you can redirect audio straight to the HDMI port also.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I read both - that it does and that it does not. If I were you, I'd go to a dedicated computer forum and READ then ask if you can't find the answers. This place would be a good start http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33.

Asus Xonar and a receiver with analog inputs might be the right way to go.