5.1 setup

[Strange Man]

Hey yall i have a Kenwood home audio amp that im running 5.1 off of for my dvd player and satalight, i hooked up the digital cable to the back of the amp from my computers sound card, some audigy gamerx or what ever its called, it wouldent work right, what i should hear from the back speaerks i hear on the front, the sub works but thats all. I was told i need to run a optical cable for it to work so i go a new card and bingo, doing the exact same thing. You guys have any ideas? my freind has has this same problem to. i search the forum but there wernt really any answers. Thanks guys.

 

[Strange Man]

oh man, nobody any ideas?

 

[ady]

I don't konw the answer to your problem all I can suggest is to try messing around with settings in volume control and control pannel. Try updating drivers too.

I also am experiencing problems with a comp to home theater 5.1 setup... My 2 front speakers work... and the rest never say a word or make a sound. Everything is connected correctly, i have downloaded millions of drivers, patches, updates codecs etc nothing ever changes tho. Ive tried coax, optical and analog output from the sound card but nothing happens. I tried emailing MSI tech support (manufacture of the mother board which has the sound card built in) and even THAT didnt work. Thats right, I got two notifications to say from MSI to say that my email had failed.... it sucks.

So if anyone out there knows anything about these problems please help me and StrangeMan!!!!!!

 

[Trifid]

Sadly I'm in the same situation, To get Dolby Digital 3/2.1 (5.1) I have to watch a dvd, and bam! The rear speackers are alive. They need to create a Dolby Digital encoder for windows, and games (mainly for games.)

 

[ady]

Thanks SOO much trifid!!!

Thanks to your above message I just managed to solve this problem that has been annoying me off for WEEKS and driving me crazy from trying a million different set ups with cables everywhere and downloading more codecs, drivers, updates, patches than imaginable

For anyone else out there who is having problems with SPDIF (sony / philips digital interface) connections into an amp heres an explanation (based on my own assumptions) as to what happens;

as trifid said computers cannot encode dolby digital
when you watch a dvd all the computer does is read the sound and chuck it straigt out of the coax or optical port withought understanding what any of it means, ideally this digital sound stream will end up in a reciver or amp which will decode it (this is why dvd's work fine in 5.1)

For games & windows however, all of the sound that is processed cannot be converted into SPDIF stream so you end up losing sub & surround information.

In order to play games in 5.1 you have to use the analoge connections on the back of the pc, and plug em into powered speakers, or into the "Multi-channel In" jacks on the back of your amp. In this case, the computer is telling the amp exactly what sound should be played through each channel. All the amp will do is put a bit of power down the speaker wire and make the speakers play what the computer wants em to play

I hope this helps someone understand how this stuff works and they dont have to go through what I did to get things to work!