(Originally posted by forum member batutu)
 
The reason I am writing this up is because I have personally just received my first 5.1 surround system and I am still learning much concerning how this stuff works with my PC. Within the 3 weeks of fooling around with the thing I have noted a few important things to keep in mind. This guide is intended mostly for people like myself who are just starting to learn how to hook up their surround sound to their PC. I have seen more than a few questions posted on these forums regarding the following information.


Again I am learning myself, so if I have posted something that doesn't sound right to you, please to not hesitate to correct me. I will try to keep this page as updated as I can with new information so check back here once in a while =P



To clear things up, the speakers I got were Logitech Z-5500's. Which can also act as Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, and Pro Logic II receiver among other things. So my first question was, what does all that mean?

Dolby Digital 5.1(DD) Info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital

DTS info:
[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_Coherent_Acoustics]http://en.wikipedia.org/w.i/DTS_Coherent_Acoustics[/link]

Pro Logic/Pro Logic II info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Pro_Logic

To make a long story short, and for ease of understanding we will say that Pro Logic II is a fake surround effect for stereo signals. From my experience sound will play from all speakers but essentially you are just going to get dialogue + active sounds out of the center speaker and music and ambient sounds playing in stereo out of your surround speakers. The difference being with DD 5.1 is you are going to get much more convincing directional effects like something coming from behind you or at an angle off-screen.

DTS is virtually the same as DD except that it has the potential to have a better sound quality. Surround effects and directional sound remains equal however. To my untrained ears, I cannot make the difference between DTS and DD.


Ok now that I understand that, its time to plug the speakers to the PC. As I am currently using my onboard sound (Realtek ALC888S) on my 790i Ultra I have the choice between 1 SPDIF (optical or coaxial) or 3x analog cables. Instinct tells me the digital connections are better than analog as I can hear a slight 'noise' when I put my ear up to the speakers when using analog. But what exactly is SPDIF and how does it work?

The following link relates mostly to the AC3 filter (more on this later), however the first half of the page has invaluble information regarding SPDIF that I struggled to find else where while troubleshooting. The guy who wrote this should be given a national holiday in his name.

SPDIF info:
http://ac3filter.net/guides/ac3filter_spdif

SPDIF wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDIF



One of the most important things to note from the AC3 Filter guide is

"Uncompressed sound transmitted over SPDIF is always stereo!"

So if you have your 5.1 surround system hooked up via optical or coaxial to your PC and you are wondering why all your games including those that fully support 5.1 surround only get played in stereo or Pro Logic II, this is why. Games do not send out DD or DTS signals. Only uncompressed sound. A soundcard with Dolby Digital Live will allow you to encode that signal into DD 5.1 which can then be sent via SPDIF to be decoded again by your receiver.

Take note that this is all it does. A standard SPDIF connection without Dolby Digital Live will still allow you to play all your DVD's, Blu-Rays, or any AC3 encoded file like music or tv shows in full Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS.

An alternative to buying a new sound card is simply to have both analog cables and the SPDIF connected to the same PC and simply switch the input on your receiver depending on what you do.

Also if you have a Creative X-Fi sound card with SPDIF connection but do not have DDL, you can check this site to see if you can buy it separately for $5:

[link=http://buy.soundblaster.com/_creativelabsstore/cgi-bin/pd.cgi?page=product_detail&category=Software&pid=F2222DDN6Z2H2ADDEZD]http://buy.soundblaster.c...id=F2222DDN6Z2H2ADDEZD[/link]



------Getting DD 5.1 from your downloaded media------------------------------

Do yourself a favor and go download AC3 filter (its free) from:      http://ac3filter.net/


90% of the tv shows I watch are all encoded in AC3 or at least something compatible. However I was only getting stereo/ Pro Logic II with anything but DVDs until I installed and properly configured this codec. I'm loving it so far as I am getting much more control over my sound levels and speaker configuration than I ever did with the Realtek Audio Manager. Just about every option and more than I dare to touch are available to modify at your leisure. Although AC3 Filter will most likely default to handle most DD or DTS signals you can tell it to ignore those signals (if like me you have a receiver that can decode DD or DTS) and only handle AC3 files. This configuration allows me to let my Z-5500s do the decoding when I watch DVDs but the codec will still encode downloaded media to play in DD 5.1


Keep in mind the AC3 Filter will not allow you to play games in 5.1. Nor will it work with Quicktime.

I have noticed a glitch which disables the surround effect when queing videos in a playlist where the next and subsequent videos begin to play in stereo. The AC3 Filter&SPDIF guide I posted above explains why this is happening when using SPDIF. Moving the playback slider to any position or restarting the video will correct this. I intend to buy a Creative X-Fi Titanium Pro, and I am hoping that it may resolve this minor issue.


-----Getting DD 5.1 from Quicktime files encoded with AC3---------------------------------------

I'm adding in this last part because it was one of the first issues I noticed when I got my speakers and was one of the last issues resolved. Luckily the solution turned out to be simple.


One of the best places to go test your sound system is the trailers page on Apple.com        http://www.apple.com/trailers/

The reason for this is the majority of their trailers are encoded in AC3 and at very high bitrate that makes for excellent sound quality. One of my favorites to test my sound is the teaser trailer to the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

[link=http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/fantasticfourriseofthesilversurfer/]http://www.apple.com/trai...riseofthesilversurfer/[/link]

yes I know the movie was beyond terrible. but the trailer makes for the best surround test out there imho. If I set my quicktime audio settings at 96Khz sound rate you can hear high pitched crackling from the fire during the close-ups of the Human Torch. A sound clearly not heard when playing at standard sound rates.


There is just one problem: As much as I have tried, I find it impossible to get 5.1 surround from the quicktime player. VLC could probably have done the trick but I think I messed around with the options so much I can't get DD 5.1 to work with quicktime files either.

In the end I simply installed the AC3 Filter and then used  "Media Player Classic: Home Cinema" which is essentially the updated version of Media Player Classic and has the H264 video codec required by mpeg4 quicktime files.

You can download "MPC:Home Cinema" for free here:
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

Its a great player I since use it for everything else. Doesn't even need to be installed.


A final thing to note - renaming your quicktime files from "xxxx.mov" to "xxxx.hdmov"

Will tell your computer to use Directshow filters instead of internal quicktime codecs. If you have trouble getting AC3 Filter to work with quicktime files, this should do the trick. Another interesting thing to note is renaming your quicktime files this way will also significantly decrease the amount of resources it takes to play quicktime files.


----- Connecting your Sound System---------------------------------------------------------------

I realize there isn't much in this guide on connecting your sound system together but I assume you know how to read your users manual. If you own a Logitech Z-5500 you really don't have any excuse as all the connections are color coded (unless you are color blind).

The only thing I can say here relates directly to the Realtek (ALC888S) HD Audio Manager which controls the onboard sound on my 790i Ultra.

For whatever reason my Realtek Audio Manager got really confused with the speaker channels. Whether I was using SPDIF or Analog cables the integrated sound test would play out of the wrong speakers. Reboots, replugging, double-checking, replugging, triple-checking, nothing worked. Then I simply re-installed the audio driver with the speakers connected and everything started working normally. Note that for whatever reason a re-install with the speakers unplugged would result in the same problem as before.



-------What not to Try---------------------------------------------------------

Ok so while I was searching around I stumbled upon this:

Realtek 3D Soundback Beta 0.1
[link=http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3]http://www.realtek.com.tw...onn=3&DownTypeID=3[/link]

Now at the time it seemed like a great idea. I'm using a Realtek audio chip right? The first thing that popped in my head was "yey I don't have to get Dolby Digital Live or a EAX sound card".

WRONG. This thing pretty much messed up every game I tried it on. It will install some .ini files in your game directory and pretty much screw up everything. Of the ones that didn't crash right away, the other half had garbled sound. To make it worse, disabling the options and uninstalling the program will leave those .ini files in your game directories and continue to affect your games. I had to go in and delete the files manually.


Long story short... don't try this. Or at least not on any recent games. Maybe its just I don't know what they mean by Legacy sound games. Either way I'm staying away from now on lol.





edit: I feel I should add a link to a parallel thread on these forums concerning SPDIF with relevant information. In particular with HDMI connection.

http://forums.evga.com...1&key=&#670768


Thanks to Chevell for providing these links:









I hope this has helped some of you,

Happy listening!

great guide rjohnson!
well written and accurate (as far as I know anyway..lol)



1 thing that should be pointed out is the obvious fact that Vista and Windows 7 killed decent sound in most games when they removed HAL from the picture and killed off DirectSound, as well as true sound hardware acceleration, so with a Realtek onboard audio, games that support DirectSound (DS3D) and EAX have some of the worse sound possible in a game (even and ESPECIALLY running Digital output).  And how many games use Directsound?  hundreds if not thousands, so how do u fix it? well I tried 2 different card to see who fixed it best:  I tried ASUS Xonar (PCIe) and Creative Labs Fatality Titanmium and the winner by far as Creative Labs (not surprising as they created EAX), Creative Labs fixes this by using Alchemy:
http://uk.europe.creative.com/corporate/pressroom/releases/detail.asp?ref=12682




Now what does this mean to new games?  Well most new games do not use DirectSound (Bill Gates made sure of that), most use OPENAL, similar scenario though and no true hardware acceleration (although creative does use hardware to convert directsound calls to openal), so a decent soundcard will fix older legacy games sound (in Vista and 7) and it will make sure new games OPENAL calls and properly converted to DirectX 10 API (DX11 as well).  And actually that is what Alchemy does, it takes DirectSound calls and converts them to OPENAL and from there to DirectX API.  


Now I have been singling out Creative Labs, but the truth is other Sound Cards also do this, but from reviews I have read, and my own testing (of ASUS XONAR vs X-FI) I can tell u no one does this better than Creative Labs, especially EAX 5.0 (heck ASUS had to admit they have no "true" EAX 5.0 support, even though the name of some of their cards has "EAX 5.0" in it)   



http://techgage.com/article/creative_eax_vs_asus_ds3d_gx_20/


After all this I can tell u I bought 2 cards and tested both thoroughly : and ASUS XONAR and  Creative Labs X-FI Fatality Titanium, and BY FAR the X-FI has better gaming sound thru digital output.  That said there of lots of ASUS Xonar reviews that are great, and it is a great card (that is why I kept it), however XONAR is not quite up to Creative's level of sound in either Legacy games (DirectSound) or even newer OPENAL games that support EAX 5.0, therefore Creative is truely a gamers card.
Movies? well they are both many, many times better sound than onboard sound for sure, and they are very close to each other quality wise there (I could not tell a difference in a movie).  But I have a mainly gaming rig and that got my X-FI and I have a mainly movies and sometimes gaming/lan pc, and that got the XONAR.
oh 1 more thing I should add in my comparison is FPS:
My benchmarks clearly favored X-FI, XONAR took some huge FPS hits in games.  Actually though most games take slight hit with a good soundcard after Directsound died...lol
The reason for this I got a XONAR PCIE, which is anything but true PCIE, it has a floppy power cable attached! because it is not true PCIE, rather a PCI bus/bridge (PLX BRIDGE) deal, probably resulting in lower FPS? 
(more PLX BRIDGE info, most pcie xonars need extra power cables, because they are not true pcie:   http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=76138)         

1 more flavor of sound in newer games as well: 
FMOD sound engine (why do we need more?...lol) anyway lots of games use this sound Engine, Crysis for example WOW and others.  The difference with this sound it is fully ran thru CPU in software, no OPENAL calls or DIRECTSOUND here.  Now u would think it would sound the same onboard or dedicated sound?  not at all, both Creative Labs and XONAR made Crysis sound way, way better than onborad sound (I am not sure how, as it is all software sound handled my the CPU), but I guess cause it passes thru a sound card and then is "clean up" or effects are added


anyway I thought I would add the gaming aspect of going to Digital Sound, and the terrible, terrible things Vista/7 did to gaming sound, and the steps Sound cards have had to take to get that quality sound back on legacy titles, and how even OPENAL games also go thru extensive sound conversions to give us quality sound.

It will probably be said that Realtek did/does have some Alchemy type driver support, as well as EAX support, however it is well known this never worked very well quality wise, or FPS wise.  And for a while u had to pay for it. 

Long and short:
If ur using Realtek for sound, you've never really heard quality sound.  In games or movies.  Dedicated sound is the only way to go.  Now if u have stereo speakers or headphones, don't worry about it, but I am suggesting to everyone, if u have a 5.1 system and run optical out, do yourself a favor and buy a dedicated sound card, you will be blown away with the increase in sound quality.

 (I also want to add I ONLY ran digital outputs with onboard realtek sound, so my comparisons are true digital to digital)





I cannot fix the middle part of my post btw
it keeps trying to think those 2 paragraphs are a weblink, I even retyped and they stay as blue and underlined