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is the 5.1 sound used in 4.1 ???

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spider_SLO

Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2003
Location
Slovenia, Bela krajina
I think Im going to buy the Z-560 4.1 speakers

What I want to know.... will the 5.1 sound be used ???

I have a 4.1 soundcard and the Z-560 are 4.1

will the DVD option 5.1 surround work well??? :rolleyes:





I mean - most of the stuff is made for 5.1 speakers... how do the 4.1 speakers handle the 5.1 sound then??? If they do, since i have a 4.1 soundcard?? :(
 
With a 4.1 speaker setup, the fronts create a "phantom" centre channel, of course it is not as good as the real thing, the z-560's should create the centre channel pretty good.

Having a 4.1 soundcard tho, this might not be able to produce 5.1ish sound in dvd's.
 
When using 5.1 Surround on a 4.1 card, all that is done is that the center channel info is split between the two fronts, divided evenly I would think.

I personally think that spending dough for cables to a computer speaker setup could be better spent elsewhere, like better speakers or computer components.
 
Voodoo Rufus said:
I personally think that spending dough for cables to a computer speaker setup could be better spent elsewhere, like better speakers or computer components.

I second that, $30+ monster cables are a gimmick and ripoff perpetuated by ignorance.

4.1 creative card? I thought they went from the basic creative Live to the 5.1 to the audigy? Is this a basic SB Live? if so, you will not be able to play dolby digital/DTS on it, the card doesn't understand the data which is why the Live 5.1s came about.
 
Voodoo Rufus said:
You can do the DD/DTS decoding in software, which is what most DVD software does by default.

But the sound card still needs to know what to do with more than 4 channels of data. (??)
 
I thought that PC DVD software asks you what kind of system you have (2ch, 4ch, 5ch, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1) and reduces the surround data accordingly.
 
Voodoo Rufus said:
I thought that PC DVD software asks you what kind of system you have (2ch, 4ch, 5ch, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1) and reduces the surround data accordingly.

Depends on the software, I believe Powerdvd does... but I see where you're coming from. :)
 
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