Sound Card to Reciever

[Cephius]

So my PC build is more or less complete, the last thing I want to get squared away is my audio. Right now I'm using a cruddy pair of logitech 2.1 speakers via the onboard audio of my evga 780i mobo. I'd like to upgrade this.

Ideally, this is the setup I want. I'll move my computer next to my entertainment center, and get the sound card to output 5.1 surround sound to my receiver. My receiver isn't top of the line, it's a Samsung that came with a home-theatre-in-a-box, but it has 5 surround sound speakers and seems to have the input connections I'd need. What I like is that right now I have my wii, 360, ps3, cable box and TV all outputting sound through this reciever and I'd like to keep it that way, plus add the computer sound.

Now, this is the sound card I've picked out.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102006

I like this because it has the front header connection that I need for my Antec 900 case, which I want when I need to plug in headphones or use a mic.

The reciever has "Aux In" labeled, with a red and white connection. Can I used the spdif out on the sound card and have it transmit 5.1 audio to the receiver? Do I need anything special for this, what cables do I use? If this won't work what would I need?

As you can tell I'm not audiophile and have largely ignored sound issues (can i hear it? yes? fine by me!) but I'm starting to get into it now and would like some pointers.

Thanks for any input.

[Snowknight26]

That card has an S/PDIF connector, too (apparently its only aux IN, not OUT). Your best bet is to do SPDIF to your receiver. What receiver do you have? Hopefully it can decode the proper format (DTS, DD, etc).

[Cephius]

It's a reciever and dvd player in one sorta, it's part of this pack: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6882676062

[Snowknight26]

It has optical in, sweet. Now just make sure the sound card can encode Dolby Digital (AC3) on the fly and you're pretty much set.

[Cephius]

That sound card doesn't have optical out though, am I missing something?

[Snowknight26]

SPDIF, not optical, sorry. You'd need to either solder or attach a Coax thing onto it.

[mootsfox]

If you go from your main audio out to a 3.5mm to RCA cable, and plug that into your receiver you will be able to hear "5.1" sound. The receiver will do it's own processing and convert from 2.1 to 5.1 if you use the RCA plugs. I'm not much of an audio guy though, and I only have old audio equipment so I'm unsure about the optical or SPDIF sound options.

[Cephius]

I've done some research and it def seems like outputting over optical would give better sound, and it seems like this card would be a better option than the creative one I picked out earlier. I'm going to wait a bit and do some more research on it but I think that one would work nicely.

[Isiolia]

If all you have as a free input is the "Aux" set of RCA jacks, then you can't really do anything with digital. Just get stereo 1/8" inch jack to stereo RCA cable and run it that way.

Without doing encoding to Dolby or DTS, if you have a free coax digital port (usually a black or orange RCA jack) you can use a mono 1/8" plug to mono RCA jack for digital sound transmission. There are also receivers out there that can be external USB audio devices. More common for digital amp based receivers I think, at least, that's what my brother's is.

On the Creative card you posted, this is the multi-jack. With Digital-out enabled, that's what it does. It can also be digital in. With the other, you can use either optical or the regular coax digital port.

As you've probably deduced by now, you won't get 5.1 digital audio out of your PC unless a program is encoding it or passing it through (DVDs for example). There are a few cards that will do encoding on the fly, but most of them aren't the mainstream products.
The other way to do this is to get a receiver that has 5.1 channel inputs and use cables like described above. Some receivers include this functionality to future proof the device, as you can hook up an external decoder and still use the amplification n' such of the receiver.

Unless you're hard on having 5.1 sound from -games-, the main thing you probably want to look for is just getting things run digitally. I've had a computer in my living room for years, never really worried about 5.1 from it though. Like people said, if you hook it up even with stereo, the receiver should be able to turn that into some sort of surround sound. If using it as a DVD player, using digital means you can pass Dolby or DTS through to the receiver and get the proper 5.1 sound.

[Cephius]

The reciever does have an optical in port available, so I'm looking to use that as it should provide better sound. I mainly want it for movies and games, as thats the primary things I use the PC for. That Azuretek card claims to do dolby digital on the fly if I read it right so it sounds like a decent card.

[Viena]

The reciever does have an optical in port available, so I'm looking to use that as it should provide better sound.

You won't really get better sound with an optical cable given that both are digital connections that transmit exactly the same data. The only point on using an optical cable for this is if it needs to cover long distances and is subject to interferences strong enough to cause loss of data.

[mootsfox]

The reciever does have an optical in port available, so I'm looking to use that as it should provide better sound.

You won't really get better sound with an optical cable given that both are digital connections that transmit exactly the same data. The only point on using an optical cable for this is if it needs to cover long distances and is subject to interferences strong enough to cause loss of data.

RCA is analog...?

AuzenTech makes some good cards and most work with EAX I believe. Some of the models share some parts with the Creative cards, I couldn't tell you which though.

The higher end Creative cards, all the full sized PCB cards, come with horrible OP-amps and it's a popular mod to replace them with better ones. I don't know if the AuzenTech's suffer from this too, but you could check a forum like http://www.head-fi.org/ That is where I go for all my tricky audio questions.

[Viena]

RCA is analog...?

Many audio cards without optical out support digital output meant for a coaxial cable, which transmits the exact same data that an optical connection would. Most devices with optical audio inputs also have connectors for those (however, after checking, that is not the case for the OP's amp, so nevermind me).