[Klug-general] Surround Sound

Tom Carlson twigathy at gmail.com
Wed Apr 20 21:13:35 UTC 2011


For my media PC, I've got it hooked up to the TV using HDMI, then from
the TV to amplifier using a S/PDIF. This allows for stereo stuff to go
out as PCM (And passed on to the amp as PCM) and for anything with a
DTS or Dolby soundtrack to go out as DTS or Dolby.

However, this doesn't work for games with surround sound. For my
windows box, I have the same as you -- three seperate cables for
left/right, sub/center and two rear speakers (Although only actually
using the l/r and rears).

There are some sound cards which will encode to Dolby on the fly, but
... for the sake of running 3 extra cables, it's probably not worth
the £! :-)

On 20 April 2011 18:26, Paul Littlefield <info at paully.co.uk> wrote:
> On 20/04/11 18:00, Tom Carlson wrote:
>>
>> Over HDMI? How's that work then? I thought HDMI couldn't cope with 5.1
>> "raw"/PCM audio...
>
> Yes, it's a minefield. I have HDMI coming from my MythTV box to my TV for
> just the video and HDMI from the PS3 for both video and audio.
>
> I could have gone 2 ways with the Surround Sound - Analog or Digital.
>
> If I had enough money, I would have gone digital and bought the nicer
> Logitech Z906 Speakers for £360 and plugged in a tiny single S/PDIF cable
> from both my MythTV box and PS3 to a beautiful set of THX Certified speakers
> and let the inbuilt Digital-to-Analog converter handle the old DVD AC3
> signal.
>
> However, I don't have £360 at the moment, so went for the Z506 Analog
> Speakers for £70 which need 3 cables run from the motherboard.
>
> After 2 hours, I don't have 5.1 - more 5.0 - no Center Channel.
>
> This is a learning curve for me, so any experience with ALSA and Surround
> Sound for Analog is gratefully received...
>
> ...and yes, I am sure that more hours spent with 15 Firefox tabs open and a
> terminal running
>
> $ speaker-test
>
> ...will eventually get me there!
>
> :-)
>
> Paully
>
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