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Help me Hook a HT to an X-Fi XtremeMusic PLZ!!!

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Will Eatforfood

Will Eatforfood

Member
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Joined
Jul 15, 2003
Location
Your basement
Hey guys. I was out shopping because my x-620's sub died. I was thinking of getting either a z-5300e/Gigaworks G500/Z-5500, but found myself at Frys. I bit on a 5.1 800w Sony Home Theater System. Might not be better than the z-5500, but should beat the other two. And it was $160!!! Price marked was $200 and should have been $214ish, but it somehow came out as much cheaper. ?=the open box ones by themselves were already 189, and this was new..

Anyways, the X-fi card has a bunch of analog outputs on the back, which sucks. Is there any way I can hook up an X-Fi to a home theater reciever and keep 5.1.....ness?
 
If you want to hook the X-Fi to the receiver youll need a digital coaxial audio cable and a 1/8" mono to RCA phono adaptor. The X-Fi will only pass 5.1 from DVD, since the DSP doesnt encode Dolby or DTS surround sound. Your DVDs will be in surround, but your music and games will be in stereo unless you use the analog outs. I would opt for the analog outs since the DAC on a home theater in a box is craptacular at most.
 
hmm.. am I out of luck? the analog method requres that the back of the reciever to have multichannel inputs right? :(

The only method I can think of right now is 3.5mm to coaxial like u said. And then disable decoding on the X-fi card. right? And this will get me 5.1 on movies only. And then 5.1 on games and music will have to be emulated using Pro Logic 2, not to mention EAX wont work????
 
The write-up is nice, however one thing I would like to address is using a composite video cable to pass a digital audio signal. It will work as it is 75 ohms, but they arent properly shielded for audio transmission...which may give off a tad bit of background noise. If you can, get something with gold connectors...it does make a difference in audio quality and is not as expensive as one would assume.
 
jivetrky said:
How does background noise work when it's a digital signal? I thought it was just sending out ones and zeros...?
Click to expand...
Youre still sending over a copper medium...which on a skinny cable like that could very easily get background interference. Optical, on the other hand doesnt get interference because its being passed on a light signal.
 
Approve this for me guys. Or tell if it's flawed. The X-Fi doesnt have Dolby. So I'm thinking I'll take it out and:

P5W-DH on board ALC882 (Dolby live) > Gold 3.5mm> Gold Coax> Reciever.

for 5.1 in games/ music without emulating on Pro Logic 2. PL 2 seems to make all the sounds more bland in order to spread them on the setup.
 
HAHHA... I forgot to actually look on the back of the mobo for the output connections. There is Toslink as well as Coaxial. I don't need the adapter at all.

On another note, OMG I friggin love P5W-DH. The Realtek onboard HD is great for DDL. I am getting all the channels, altho I think it's limited to 48khz. But it sounds great. My music isn't 5.1, but I dont want to do pro logic II because it seems to downgrade the sound WAY too much.

Only feature I miss from the X-fi so far. The "Xpand" vs. "Surround" feature.
 
MadMan007 said:
Does outputting directly from the motherboard give you real, not simulated, surround in games as well as movies?
Click to expand...

If the board outputs DD live, its still simulated, but receivers pick it up as DD and you get 5 different channels. Its not as good as actual audio encoded in DD, but its better than pro logic or 3 stereo.
 
nvidiaOCmaster said:
If the board outputs DD live, its still simulated, but receivers pick it up as DD and you get 5 different channels. Its not as good as actual audio encoded in DD, but its better than pro logic or 3 stereo.
Click to expand...


What do you mean? Actually I believe Digital Dolby Live encodes into Digital Dolby on the fly/real time, and isn't simulated. It's the same technology as on the Auzentech and Turtle Beach cards.

And yes, the p5w-Dh ALC-882 fully supports DD live, Dolby Virtual Speakers, as well as Pro Logic IIx. Currently, I hooked up one Coaxial from the mobo to the reciever and I'm done. All the digitals are played as "DVD" input and the reciever lights up as "CoAX Dolby Digital".

I turned on Battlefield 2 and OMG>..... it was too loud the first time I had it on, and dB level on there like 25 (8 in the morning, scared the crap out of me). There were helicopter sounds where there should be, guns; everything I'm not used to hearing or heard but was blurred with the rest. Completely blows my X-Fi/ X-620 setup out of the water.
 
You do know that you can run both soundcards. Dont let that X-Fi sit there and collect dust, use it for headphone gaming or music. All you have to do is install the drivers and point Windows what youd like the card to be used for. The good music players like Winamp and Foobar also let you pick which soundcard youd like to use. Just open your Windows audio control panel and youll see what Im talking about :).
 
:) Good idea. Do you think the receiver's built in encoding will be better for the headphones? It's got a nice 1/4 headphone hookup on the front of. I am thinking about doing what ur saying but hooking up the headphones to the back each time will be a pain in the ***. No I/O part on the X-Fi or else I could have used x-fi with coaxial/optical.
 
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