SBLive, Computers and Home Theatre

[Helevitia]

Greetings MURC community,

I recently purchased a Home Theatre System. I have several options for plugging in devices including optical, coax, RCA, etc...What I'm wondering is, how can I plug my computer into the receiver to get the best quality sound from my MP3's? I have the original SBLive! Value which doesn't support Dolby Digital. I know I can run RCA to the receiver and do it that way, but how do I get digital to digital? If this means buying a new sound card such as the SBLive 5.1 or Hercules, let me know

Thanks,

Dave

------------------
What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about?

[Jon P. Inghram]

Just get a 3.5mm -> RCA adaptor or appropriate cable and hook the digital out from the SBLive! into the digital coax connector on the amp. Over at www.headwize.com lots of people use a high quality DAC to get high quality sound out of their SBLive!.

[edit] Ahhh! Forget to spellcheck when I knew I misspelled something! [/edit]

[This message has been edited by Jon P. Inghram (edited 30 April 2001).]

[Liquid Snake]

Well, if you have an optical output, or S/PDIF, just plug that into the system.

[az]

And if you're into playing games, you can hear EAX if you connect your soundcard to your analog 5.1 ins in your receiver.

AZ

[Helevitia]

Hi All,

John,

That sounds good but what digital out on the SBLive? I dont think I have one?

LS,

That would be perfect if I had an Optical out but I dont. And as far as I know, the S/PDIF is only IN not OUT.

az,

I already enjoy EAX games with my 4.1 Klipsch System(best PC speakers on the planet), but when I have company over or, I'd like to pump the MP3's to the living room instead of turning up the Klipsch speakers to compensate for good sound.

I am welcome to more feedback if anyone else has anything to say. Also, when it comes to home theatre, I am very new so pretend you are talking to a 5 year old so I can understand

Thanks,

Dave

------------------
What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about?

[J1NG]

I remember that sound card, I just gave one away when I upgraded a relatives PC for free. (They help my family out a lot)

And I know that the ORIGINAL Sound Blaster Live! Value card , which I'm assuming is the one you have (You can check this by looking at the back, it there's only four connections/jacks and one joystick/midi port, that's it) does NOT have the digital output connection for Digital singals. So it looks like from my perspective that you'll have to change that sound card to the 5.1 (Not unless you're gonna next tell us, you have the original Marvel G200 with DVD ddecoder or something similar anyway...)

J1NG

[Gurm]

It's a matter of cost, really.

Some SB Live! Value cards have a digital versa-jack sort of thing that's a little offset from the other jacks. This requires purchasing a $15-ish dongle to make it work.

Some, however, have no digital headers at all (the very early ones).

In this case, a daughtercard is required. Hoontech makes some very nice ones. But, since a new 5.1 X-gamer or mp3+ is around $75, there is precious little point to investing $35 on a daughterboard.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Helevitia]

OK, thats what I thought, my card is one of the FIRST SBLive's to come out. It definitely doesn't have a digital out. I was thinking of getting the x-gamer 5.1, hmmm, I wonder what kind of connection the digital out is? I guess I'll go look it up.

Thanks for all the suggestions

Dave

------------------
What if the Hokey Pokey is what it's all about?

[Liquid Snake]

I dunno what the X-Gamer 5.1 has. If you want some home theater info, just check the "What's a good audio-video equipment forum?" thread not too far down from here.

[Wombat]

Either Joel or Jammrock have ordered add-ons from another company, adding outputs to their Live! that aren't originally there. Search the forums, or ask them.

[Helevitia]

Thanks Wombat, I will.

Dave

[Indiana]

And be carefull before you buy a new SBLive5.1 card. Creative is said to bring a new btter card out SOOON, the Audigy, which includes Aureal technology.

And all the SBLives tend to have problems in Win2k, with VIA chipsets (not here, my SBLive! is working fine with my VIA/Duron in 2k).
Besides the signal-quality of the Live cards is only mediocre, but that doesn't really matter much if you use the digital out and use your amplifiers HQ DAC.

P.S.: Also have a look at Hercules new soundcard - don't know the exact name, but it's said to be quite good.

[This message has been edited by Indiana (edited 01 May 2001).]

[Liquid Snake]

Really? I thought Creative would've abandoned Aureal's technology. If we can finally get a card with A3D 2.0 under Win2K, I will die a happy man

[Snake-Eyes]

Hercules' top end card is the Game Theater XP. It's what I'm using in my new T-Bird 1.33/Asus A7M266 system right now, and I can vouch for it's sound quality. It really seems much better than the Live!Value I was using before. Of course, my wife's using that card now, since it's still better than the generic cards on the market.

On down side to this Hercules card is that the driver control panels aren't always as intuitive as the reviews lead you to think, and changing some settings can have unexpected results- for instance, changing the digital out to operate for whatever source is playing will override the volume control.

Why do I mention that one? I first set up my system and hooked up a digital connector to my Creative DTT3500's and the analog fronts and rears, too, so that when I watch DVDs I can use 5.1 and still have 4.1 for DS3D/A3D 1.0/EAX 1/2 games. I had the card correctly configured for 4 speaker output (for analog sources and wav output), so that I got the expected output through the analogs. Then when I was playing with the digital panel, I changed it from the DVD source to something else, and couldn't figure out why I suddenly had no control over volume, and also couldn't figure out why directionality (front-to-rear) was lost. It played full volume on all 5 speakers (or 2 if I went left or right), but didn't do front or rear only. This is because it was outputing stereo to the DTT3500's decoder on the digital in. This meant that the 3500's amp was now responsible totally for volume, and since that decoder automatically uses both front and rears for stereo digital sources (ie. both left or both right depending on what stereo channel is being used), I had no real surround effect. Changing the digital selection in the driver control applet back to the DVD fixes this, but there are no real good documention sources on the use/effects of different settings in the Hercules applets. This is the biggest shortcoming I've yet seen, and really begs to be addressed. The hardware and drivers are great, but the docs stink.

------------------
System specs:
AMD T-Bird 1.33 (o.c. to 1.5Ghz)
Asys A7M266
256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
Promise Fastrak 100 EIDE Raid controller running
2x IBM DTLA 60GB 7200 RPM UDMA 100 hdd, RAID 0 array

[Helevitia]

"Dolby Digital™ and DTS™ formats supported by PowerDVD™ on the digital outputs of the Game Theater XP (Coaxial or Optical)."

This is from the Hercules Game Theater XP Page. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I'll probably wait until I hear more form the new Creative card, Audigy. Thanks everyone for all of your info.

Dave