Hey everyone,

Well, just bought and built a new PC (listed below) with much credit to THG forum input [thanks everyone!]. Basically, i got the Logitech X-530 5.1 Speaker setup with onboard sound (Realtek AC'97). Now, i'm kinda hoping to get some high-quality sound coming out. With the onboard, i can't control rear speakers, and when i "test" the speakers, it seems as though the wiring is messed up, but i have everything plugged in correct.
(during test: Front Left and Front Right work fine, but Rear Left- sound comes from center, Rear Right-bump sound, Center=Rear Left sound, Sub=Rear Right sound). Should i just get new software,speakers, sound card?

Basically, i'm just wondering what you think in terms of what to get. I want something i can hook up to both my TV and PC in my room (have a surround system preferrably). Lemme know what i can get for price ranges, like for HomeTheatre, what i could spend to get some good equipment,etc... What should i get in terms of:
- Speakers
- Sound card
- Software

I record music, play High-end games (BF2,HL2,COD2,FarCry,more to come), DVD's, listen to music a lot.

If HT is what you think i should setup for:
- Receiver with Dolby Digital/DTS
- Remote
- Sub
- Speakers
- may wait for the DVD player...
- what i need to hook up to PC (cables, equipment,etc)

Lemme know what you guys/gals think. Thanks in advance

HT is a whole 'nother league compared to PC speakers in both sound quality (accuracy, performance off-axis, linearity, dispersion, clarity, etc) and price.


(1)SPEAKERS
For speakers, for a 5.1 setup, a popular starting point would be the SVS SBS-01 set that includes the well-received PB-10 subwoofer, for $999.

http://www.svsound.com/products-sys-sbs.cfm

You can see from the measurements and the components used, this is a speaker setup that is going be superior to most sets in this price range...at the cost of cosmetics.

Now not everyone has the ear for it, but if you want to go into real audiophile territory, in terms of tonal accuracy, you can get five Ascend CBM-170SEs for around $900, plus say a Hsu STF-2 (roughly equivalent to the PB-10) for around $399. Total price is around $1,300. The Ascends are +/- 1.5db from 60-20Khz, and the sub will bring that linearity to +/-3db 25-20KHz. It's almost impossible for me to convey just how *accurate* and *linear* this system is.

Common computer multimedia speakers with single-3 inch drivers commonly measure +/-7.5db 120-13KHz, for reference. The lack of a tweeter means highs fall off quickly, and multimedia subs, if you have experience with them, do not truly integrate, but *overpower* satellites and accuracy below 120hz drops off significantly.

http://www.ascendacoustics.com/

These are two of the most exciting speaker products that have been recently released, and being internet direct brands the price they offer for this performance level you would have trouble, or actually, impossibility to find in retail brands, from SEAs tweeters, modified Audax composite aerogel/polygel woofers, Linkwitz-Riley crossovers, etc. You won't be dissapointed. To say the least, these loudspeakers are a head above the competition, and we are talking about highly-valued names like B&W, Energy, PSB, Paradigm, Monitor Audio, etc. Ascend and SVS provide everything you need to know about the performance of their loudspeakers, including graphs on frequency response, off-axis, impedence, and spectral decay.

If this is above your budget, the most common advice is to build up, and start with a stereo pair and a receiver and set the foundation for a speaker setup that can last you for 20+ years. On the flip side, if you have no patience for this sort of thing and like to go through "pre-built home-theater-in-a-box" speaker sets like one video game console after the next, every couple of years...well that's your choice too. In that case any number of satellite/speaker combinations for around $300-500 might satisfy your needs, although acoustically, to the high value SVS or Ascend setups, would be like comparing a 486 to a Pentium III. Economically, I would like to point out going through periodic "upgrades" every few years ends up costing a lot more than building up your dream setup over time. But some people really have no patience for even a slight challenege, and so for them their value judgements are a bit different, as they are willing to accept less performance and throw a few middling dollars every few years to "slightly improve" their audio problem.

I commonly see guys in forums in Anandtech who have gone through something like this the last 8 years: bought Altec Lansing ATP3, gave to dad, two years later, bought Logitech Z-640s, threw that in the garage, two years later bought Logitech Z-680s, gave that to a cousin, three years later, bought Logitech Z-5500s, sold them, then bought Creative S750...the process goes on forever. This is what I am talking about...it's like an exercise in futility. I am constantly "told" by people like this that I am a golden-eared audiophile who throws my money at things they can't even perceive, that what they have is more than enough.

My question to them--1) why do you keep upgrading if you are always so satisfied? and 2) why do you think I throw my money away when you've clearly spent more money on audio the last ten years than I have, actually more like 3 times as much?--I've spent $600, you've spent over $1,500... and 3) Doesn't your behavior seem more like you aren't utilizing your money the best and not I?...but these questions usually fall on deaf ears and they accuse me of being an "audiophile" like I have the plague or something. Such is life : P

(2) Receiver

The popular receiver these days is the digitally amplified Panasonic SA-XR55. You can find out all you want about it here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=530504
(If you don't have the patience, basically it's a highly valued receiver, and has all the regular shabangs including DD5.1/DTS/Prologic 2x, etc)

Suffice to say at $230 it provides more power than most $800 ones with lower distortion figures, more linearity, and lower noise floor. To take advantage of this you will need to connect digitally to your receiver, as it is a digital WPM receiver...on to the sound card.


(2) Sound card

For gaming needs, I would suggest the Bluegears X-mystique or Turtle Beach Montenegro. These both do real-time Dolby Digital encoding like the old nforce 2 motherboards used to do, and this allows you to connect digitally to your receiver and have all the surround gaming goodness as well. This is a good thing...your music will be significantly more noise-free through digital pass-through and have the receiver do the primary processing than analog, where your sound card gets into the mix and adds noise.

Reading your other thread, I see you really want to get into the recording thing. I'm not experienced with this, and the Dolby Digital Live (DDL) cards I offered might not be of much help there. There is some compromise to be had with these consumer electronics. Perhaps an analog card with a breakout box might work for you better, all things given.

(4) Software

Sorry, I don't do much recording. Can't help you much there.

(5) Sub
Hsu or SVS are considered market leaders. Stick with them, unless you can't fit them into your budget. Then I would suggest looking at older Mirage subwoofers, like the S12, or even a cheap $150 one like the Dayton Sub-120 at partsexpress.com (it won't give you the heartpounding subsonic 20hz bass...but that's for movies mostly, music doesn't go that low in general, and games certainly don't either).

(6) DVD Player

Panasonic S77/97 or Oppo OPDV971H...IF you have a large screen TV, as the poor image quality of many DVD players become apparent on larger screens (40" and above). Things like color saturation, chroma issues, are fixed (or at least improved) with the faroujda based chipsets on both players. Roughly $200-300 for each player. If you run a 27" TV, then any old cheap DVD player in the $60-100 would work for you, since the TV would hide most image quality problems.

(7) Hookups

A toslink or coaxial digital cable. That's it, if you follow the easy route I gave you. If you need something else (like something of significantly lower budget), we may start running into more cables, more clutter, etc.

If you go analog card with breakout box, you *can* use the digital out for music and 3 analog cables for gaming (to the receiver). If the extra digital cable is a hassle to you for music, then use the regular analog cable, and I suppose Creative's resampling has improved somewhat so that distortion with music playback is less of an issue.

Hope this helps

If the sounds are not coming out of the correct speaker then you have something set up wrong.
I would think that you have the plugs for the center/sub and rear speakers switched.
I would also check the speaker settings in windows and with any program that came with the motherboard to control sound.
I have those same speakers and use onboard also and I get full surround sound.

I would recommend a decent Sound Blaster or Turtle Beach sound card.

Onboard audio is VERY bad :-(

Even an old SB Live Value 5.1 card is way better than onboard sound and can be had for $10-$40 online (ebay, newegg, etc).

You do not have to spend a fortune to have better sound

The Audigy isn't bad either.

If you want top of the line speakers the Klipsch speakers are awesome although they cost a fortune ($399 retail $299 @newegg for the 5.1s). Logitech and Creative Labs speakers are decent too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6836119106


For software I would say give Fedora Core 4, ubuntu or Knoppix a try They all have great audio software like audacity, mplayer, xmms, xine and a TON of other packages.

http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/c [...] 86-DVD.iso
http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/c [...] 64-DVD.iso
http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/kno [...] -23-EN.iso
http://ubuntu.com/download

For windoze... I dunno... what are you trying to do?

Found out my dad's got a Kenwood VR-407... pretty nice

Bluegears X-Mystique:
http://www.bluegears.com/xmystique.html
http://www.bluegears.com/wheretobuy.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6829127001
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Prod [...] =BLUEGEARS

Turtle Beach:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6829118109
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/pr [...] s/mtgoddl/

Which is better in terms of price/performance/features ratio? What will suit my needs best?

I already have recording Firewire Interface along with software (PreSonus Firebox/ Cubase LE)
http://www.presonus.com/firebox.html

I was actually referring to audio features/setup/configuration...But don't those sound cards you recommended come with great software? (just want versatility and great performance with audio sound/quality/features)

Basically looking to spend about $400-$700 tops total (speakers/sub/soundcard MAYBE a DVD player)

debatable, since my budget is like $700 tops, what's a good midrange one?

Yah, looking to not have such expensive setup... i have some Monster cables from my dad's old setup, what would i need to hook up everything?

Definately lead me in the right direction. I appreciate the input! 8)

Basically, i just want to get:
- 5.1 Surround Sound setup
- Soundcard
- DVD player possibly
- great sound
- great features

All for $450-$650 or $700, haven't decided the tops yet... Possibly some powered speakers (so i can hear what i record through my firewire interface...)

Lemme know, thanks for all the help; hopefully i can make this a dream surround setup for a pretty affordable price... thanks, lemme know ASAP if you can please. -take care

Some DVD players i've found, lemme know what you think, what's better:
-Panasonic DVD-S77

features:
- HD and regular TV ready
- coax/opt
- DVI and HDMI? (or is it one or the other?)
- can hold at least 1 CD, 4 tops
- future oriented
- great price-performance ratio
- can offer great performance with equipment i get

If you are on a lower budget, I would suggest a pair of bookshelves and you can use your X-530s as surrounds for games.

For example, get an RCA to stereo mini converter and plug that into the receiver. A pair of Ascend CBM-170SE ($350) or SVS SB-01s ($230). You probably ought to save money for a good sub, because it's good subs are far more expensive than good speakers. But a good backup "movie" sub (if the X-530s aren't enough) would be the Dayton Sub-120 or Sub-100 at partspress.com, ($125 and $150 respectively).

Between the X-mystique and the Turtle Beach? I'm not really sure, although I know the X-mystique is the newer card. You should do a websearch but I'm pretty sure they are very similar.

DVD player, like I said, unless you need faroujda-chroma color correction, any player is satisfactory, just make sure it plays a lot of formats like DVD-A and DIVX. Just to throw out a name, an example would be the Phillips DVP642 which sells for $60 at your local Wallmart.

So all of this is around $500 to $700 depending on how you choose your components. This fits into your budget and you'll be able to replace your surround channels as you get more money. That would be my suggestion.

i appreciate the help.

in terms of Soundcards, why didn't you recommend Creative X-Fi series?
Creative X-Fi Line

Well we had been talking all along about connecting digitally, so a DDL-equipped card was going to be important. Certainly the second option of going all-analog, the X-Fi should be a sufficient card as well. It does resample music in analog mode unfortunately which leads to intermodulation distortion, which adds a slight harshness to high frequency sounds. Bet you are happy I recommended some neutral speakers eh? Some brighter speakers might become unbearable with more harshness heh.

If you can get a good price on an X-Fi, that should work well for you as well. Creative spent a good deal of their budget on resampling horsepower so music output should be a fair less harsh than the older Audigy 2 line.

oh, so i should prob stick with Digital then?
what's difference between digital and analog?
what would suit my needs?

i have the connections in the right spots (they are color labeled and pretty self-explanatory). I also plugged the orange,green, and black to Audio connectors on mobo...

The AUDIO headers are connected via 9-pin...don't see a problem there

what would the problem be?...everythings plugged into the right place from the sub and the Audio connectors....it should be right, maybe it's just the test is just messed up, the speakers run fine...

In your situation since you already have a receiver, you don't need to get the digital Panasonic, so therefore you don't need a dolby digital live card, and since you are probably leaning toward an X-Fi right now, you should stick to analog.

If you go digital you will not get surround sound in games, so getting an X-Fi would be an exercise in futility. The difference between analog and digital is that digital bypasses the signal processing to the receiver/decoder. Analog has the work done by the soundcard.

Analog is usually 3 stereo mini plugs, and my suggestion is for you to use the stereo front output and connect that to the receiver using an RCA to stereo mini cable at Radioshack for $7. This way your mains will be the bookshelves. You can connect the rear and surround analog outs to your X-530 as surrounds for games.

Digital would be 1 cable, toslink or coaxial. Since its only a single signal path, you need a way to compress several surround channels into one, such as what DDL does, in order to achieve surround sound in games. Otherwise, only pre-encoded stuff like DVDs would come out in full surround. But since you are going analog it won't be a problem, unless your budget suddenly shoots up a couple hundred $

kinda confusing, but OK:

i was hoping to hook up some HT speakers to both my PC and my TV...you said that they're a much bettern investment in the long run

1.) I've seen some friends' DVD players that come with surround sound, could i get one of those and hook that up to both my TV and PC also? or would it be better to get bookshelves or somethin...

2.) could i just get a 6-piece surround set?

i've been looking at some with good reviews:
-Polk Audio RM6005 with PSW202 subwoofer=$500
-Cambridge Soundworks Movieworks 106=$400

what would you recommend (not just out of these 2, hoping to get from Crutchfield, BestBuy, CiruitCity, Maganolia Hi-Fi, or Fry's...

3.) really no point in using a receiver if im going with both soundcard/X-530's + bookshelves, i kinda want one or the other (mainly HT setup)

Usage:
- Plugin surround sound into both PC and TV
- Play PC games, and also play console games
- Watch DVD's on both
- experience "true" quality at an affordable price

lemme know. thanks again

I gave you recommendations on bookshelves, and "building up" because it saves you money in the long run and also provides more long term happiness, and because you said "you listen to music alot" so I figured quality was your primary concern.

I have a 2.1 setup and I'm more than happy for games and movies. I pull out some computer speakers for rears and surrounds when I watch DVDs, and for gaming I use decent Sennheiser headphones, and they are more than enough for me in competitive FPS gaming. I'm looking to complete my 5.1 setup over time as money comes in and I try to get deals on preowned Ascend speakers. That's the way I'm handling my audio stuff. If it works for you, I'm happy for you, if not, then the best of luck to you.

Could you just get a home theater-in-a-box multi-piece setup? Sure you can, am I holding you back? I certainly don't believe they are a good value, but like buying a Dell, if you want to save time, don't care about quality and just want something with surround channels, then do whatever is best for you. I've already said all that I pretty much can, otherwise I'm just repeating myself from now on.

The quality for those pre-built systems are all very close, all with overworked tiny drivers, chuffing subs, and some low-grade electronics, so I won't try to "recommend" anything, since your guess is as good as mine.

"3.) really no point in using a receiver if im going with both soundcard/X-530's + bookshelves, i kinda want one or the other (mainly HT setup)"

I'm confused by this statement. You mean to say you are going to get rid of your X-530s? Otherwise, for either a gaming setup, you'd need a soundcard, and you already have the receiver...what's there to have or the other?

"Usage:
- Plugin surround sound into both PC and TV
- Play PC games, and also play console games
- Watch DVD's on both
- experience "true" quality at an affordable price"

*You are going to need a soundcard AND a receiver if you want PC and TV connectivity.
*You don't have that kind of connectivity options on a X-530 alone.
*You aren't going experience quality better than computer speakers if you are going to settle for a home-theater-in-a-box
*I think the option's I've outlined are the cheapest to reach your goals. It seems like you have problems with it. Getting an HtiB will fix your connectivity issues. It won't give you quality. As long as you understand this, various HTIB satellite/subwoofer/DVD-player combos are available for the $500 mark.

Yup, quality is my main concern

oOOOOohhh... I didn't know i could use the X-530's in conjunction with the 2.1 setup. won't it sound crappy though?

Alrite, things are starting to become clearer now. it does seem that those HTIB are cheap stuff, didn't realise that building from scratch is better... thanks for that.

Didn't realize i could use both X-530's AND the 2.1 setup. that does seem pretty cool and it would save me money... (i just wasn't gonna use the X-530's, but you've given me some insightful input)

Yah, i think i'll just stick with my 5.1 plus the 2.1 HT speakers. kinda weird how you can hook up two totally different speakers (HT and PC), i thought you needed either one or the other.
- so i would just use the 2 rear + center + sub from PC & the 2.1 HT?
- how would i set it up?

sorry for all the questions and everything, i appreciate your help and patience. get back to me whenever you got the free time. take care man -later

What he is trying to tell you buddy is that if you buy somthing like an HT in a box set up, You WILL not get what your asking for.

Start small (like me) and be happy in the long run; rather then droping loads of wasted money into some shit HTIB and finally realising that it is just compared to what you can get with a few hundred extra dollars. It sounds like that would be the best thing for you to do, and what your asking for.

"Yah, i think i'll just stick with my 5.1 plus the 2.1 HT speakers. kinda weird how you can hook up two totally different speakers (HT and PC), i thought you needed either one or the other.
- so i would just use the 2 rear + center + sub from PC & the 2.1 HT?
- how would i set it up?"

Goto Radioshack. Buy an RCA to Stereo mini converter for $7. This goes into the "front L/R" in the 6-channel direct or any stereo input on the receiver. Your bookshelves will play music (stereo) and do the front soundstage for movies and games.

Connect the other two (black and yellow I think?) outputs to the X-530. This can serve as backup rears and surrounds for gaming and movies. Will this sound bad? Yeah, it won't be the greatest. But gaming needs aren't that great, and I know in movies more than 75% of the audio information comes from the center channel alone (when you run just stereo front/left, your receiver downmixes the center channel from DD5.1/DTS mixes into the stereo front left/right mix...so no loss there. We call that "phantom center." ). So you'd be taking advantage of your good "mains" most of the time anyway. The rears and surrounds see some surround effects in movies; its not "that" big of a deal, but its nice if you have the money (and eventually will) for a full-fledged HT setup. Music is mostly 2-channel. Your taking full advantage of music with your bookshelves.

Hope this helps.