Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[zeltak]

hi guys!

finally got a new reciever after all these years (yamaha) thats support surrond (up to 7.1 channels) sound . im outputing everythig through a spdif output on my audigy and was wondering what was the best setting in order to listen to MC music in 5.1 (or even 7.1  ). should i use the JRSS feature or just output the music to the reciever and let him do the job? should it be in ASIO or Wave out...etc etc...can anyone help, its a bit confusing...

thx alot

Zeltak

[paulr]

Yamaha historically has had very good DSPs in their products.  I would be inclined to use ASIO output (no multichannel processing) and let the Yamaha sort out the surround mode.

[Chris Shaw]

I don't think you can transmit uncompressed multichannel audio over an SPDIF. The only way I know is to use a motherboard with the nForce chipset on it. This allows you to encode a 5.1 signal to AC3 (Dolby Digital) in real time. The quality's pretty poor, though.

[DocLotus]

Hi zeltak;

I did have problems trying to get 5.1 Surround Sound through the single SPDIF coax cable; that is, until I got my wonderful Logitech Z-680 5.1 speaker system.

The Logitech Z-680 speaker system has a control panel with Dolby Pro Logic II & dts Surround Sound hardware built-in.  This is similar to your Yamaha.

My Logitech manual recommends for best sound with 6 speakers (Dolby 5.1) to use the single digital output cable form my sound card.  That is the jack that is marked as Center channel.  Make sure you run the Creative Surround Mixer & put a check in the Digital Output Only box; this will convert the Center channel output jack from an analog to a digital out jack with full 5.1 Surround sound.  You will then use only the one (Center channel) jack output to your Yamaha.

When hooked up with an analog output (separate Front, Center, & Real output jacks) the Center channel is simply one of the analog outputs (Center only). The Creative Surround Mixer does not have a check in the Digital Output Only box; this will leave the Center channel output jack as a simple analog Center out.  This is the default out-of-the-box setting unless you changed it to Digital Output Only.

I have my DirecTV satellite audio output (Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound) going through my Audigy sound card by way of the ATI A-I-W 9600 Pro video card with TV tuner.

I also have the Optical output from my DirecTV satellite receiver going directly to the Optical input of the Logitech Z-680 control panel.

I can switch back & forth between the direct Optical input coming from the DirecTV & the coax input coming from the Audigy; the sound is the same.

I always get the full 5.1 channels (left front, center, right front, left rear, right rear & woofer.)

When DirecTV is broadcasting a show in Dolby 5.1, I will get the full 5.1 Surround Sound effects.

One note about the digital coax output from the Audigy.  If you use the single digital coax out (Center channel) the Creative Surround Mixer Test button will only test the Front Left & Front Right speakers.  If you use the analog out (all three jacks) the Test button will then send the test signal to all 6 speakers.  Not really sure why this is but suspect that the test signal is geared to analog & does not work fully on digital.

To make sure all is working with the digital setup go to the Creative folder, find & play one of the 5.1 ac3 test songs such as Samba Del Gringo.ac3.  It will rock your system with real 5.1 Surround Sound.  You will simple hate normal stereo from then on.  Also note that MC will not play the ac3 music so you will have to use the Creative player for ac3 music.  Hope JRiver comes up with a solution to this one of these days as ac3 blows everything else away.

Hope this all helps a little.

[zeltak]

hi everyone !

DocLotus, thx for detailed answer  . i couldnt understand though if the spdif on the front bay in my audigy is the same as the rear center channel output or diffrent to the fact that only the rear channel output can output 5.1 sound (commpresed or uncomprresed, i cant really understand that stuff..) . the second thing is that in my creative sound card help files it shows you need to connect the single 5.1 output from the rear center (like you said) to an AC-3 input on the reciever....i have a brand new yamaha but dont have anything like that on my reciever, only a spdif in (X2). and one last thing (sorry to be a pest  ) i have a 5.1 inspire speaker setup on my desktop and i output the sound as i said to the reciever in the living room, so the rear center channel output is ocupied right now, will it downgrade the quality alot if i have a  mini-jack spliter there?
thx alot again

Zeltak  

[xen-uno]

A splitter cable wouldn't be a good idea for power and impedance reasons. An A-B switch would work fine, though.

[DocLotus]

Looks like you have the same Audigy as I do... the Audigy Platinum with the front panel Live Drive.

Yes, the SPDIF out on the front Live Drive bay in the Audigy is the same as the rear Center channel output (when the Creative Surround Mixer is set up for Digital Output Only as previously mentioned).

If you are going to use the front panel Live Drive output then I would suggest you use the Optical out as it is a slightly cleaner sound.  I am assuming that the Yamaha supports optical inputs.  Optical is always the best signal if it is available.

The name for AC3 may vary form manufacturer to manufacturer (there is no real standard for this). The input on you Yamaha may say something like SPDIF, Digital Input, or Optical Input but on all newer units it is pretty much the same thing; Dolby Digital Surround sound and / or dts Digital Surround Sound.

What happens is the digital sound is carried by a single coax or optical cable to the digital input on your box (your Yamaha) and the hardware in the box takes care of all conversions.  It usually work flawlessly converting 2 channel stereo to 5.1 channel output and passing true 5.1 Surround Sound through.  The end results being that all music comes out of all 6 speakers regardless of how many channels it started with.

Before I had a hardware decoder (my Logitech Z-680 Control panel) I was using 10 Sony speakers wired up to the analog outputs of my Audigy (Front, Center, & Rear).  It was a real pain in the you-know-what as I often did not get anything out of the center speaker when playing stereo  (it only worked with ac3 surround files which MC does not play.  Or sometimes the rear speakers were mute.  All that went away with a hardware decoder.  It automatically takes care of those weird problems.  I love it.

Rather then using a splitter I suggest you use the Live Drive optical or SPDIF out to the Yamaha as mentioned above.  A splitter can cause impedance matching problems and possibly sound distortion.