Getting sound from PC to Receiver (1 Viewer)

[Jon W.]

Having a little trouble here. My PC is behind my couch and I have a flat panel monitor on my end table for surfing between comercials. I would like to get an audio signal to my receiver for listening to MP3s. Moving the computer close to the receiver is not really an option atm due to space and the fact of getting signal to the flat panel. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy MP3+ card and I just tried a 1/8 to stereo rca cable with a 15' stereo rca cable along the floor and it didn't sound very good. The cables are very low quality but I hate to buy such a long expensive cable and it not be the culprit. The bass response was ok but the mids and highs just sounded very lacking. If I burn the same MP3s to CD and put them in my DVD player they sound much fuller. The audigy has no coaxial or optical out without buying an add on card for 60 bucks which I'd gladly pay if I knew the quality would improve. Any ideas?

 

[Leo Kerr]

A lot of sound-cards have crap for analog i/o stages.

There are some good ones - the one I have at work isn't too bad - but a generalization is, if you can get the analog stages out of the box, you're probably better off.

It seems odd to me that your sound card doesn't have at least a coax out on it.. but then at home, we've been tending toward performace gaming, and piping a DD/PCM signal out to the HT processor has been... performance?

Leo

 

[Sami Kallio]

Get a Chaintech AV-710, that has bit-perfect optical out and it only costs $20 or so.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...ight=chaintech

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec....iteria=AA26510
http://www.newegg.com/oldversion/app...120-103&depa=1

 

[Jon W.]

I never even thought about it being the d/a converters in the card. Probably a good possibility.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

If that’s the same plug you used to run the long cables to the receiver, that’s an analog output, not digital.

For an analog signal feed, the soundcard’s D/A converters are going to make or break your sound quality. It would probably be much better to just get a sound card with a coaxial or optical output.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Jon W.]

Not the same one Wayne. The card has 3 analog 1/8 outputs, a digital 1/8 SPDIF output and a 1/8 mic input. The 3 analog outputs can be configured for one to be front left and right, another for rear left and right, and the last one for center and subwoofer. Thats the way most computer speaker systems hook up. I had my analog stereo rca cables running off the front left and right 1/8 output and the computer was configured through the control panel for 2 channel output using the front output channel.

After looking at the Chaintech card the problem with it is buying a 25 foot optical cable. It would be much cheaper to go coaxial I'm guessing.

 

[Jon W.]

Replaced the Audigy with an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 today. It has a coaxial out and that made all the difference in the world. Thanks for pointing out the D/A converters, It never occurred to me.

 

[EricRWem]

My sound card is the latest Platinum ZS. It has optical and firewire and the whole nine yards. Apparently I can even do DVD-A off of this. How would I need to set this up? What software would I use to get DVD-A to actually play?