How do I hook a home theater receiver up to my pc?

[urbanokt]

would you go so far as to say ditch the whole idea of pc to receiver to speakers for now?

[IAmGhostDog]

dumb question. but what is eax2, 3, and 4?

Creative Introduces EAX 3.0 API - A New Generation of Environmental Audio for Gaming
EAX 3.0 Adds New Features to Popular API That Brings New Levels of Realism to 3D Games, Internet Audio Applications and Interactive Entertainment

SAN JOSE, Calif., Game Developers Conference, March 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Creative Labs, Inc. the world's leading provider of multimedia products for the PC, today introduced EAX(TM) 3.0, a new version of its popular Environmental Audio(TM) Extensions (EAX) application programming interface (API) for developers. EAX 3.0 provides sound design tools that produce new levels of realism for morphing between environments, localized reflection clusters, individual reflections for distant echoes and improved distance cues utilizing Creative's novel statistical reverberation model. As such EAX 3.0 offers developers full control of environmental sound parameters that intensify the gaming and entertainment experience. The new sound design tools in EAX 3.0 build on Creative's Environmental Audio Extensions API that is being used by top developers worldwide to add environmental effects to 3D games.

With the Environmental Audio Extensions API, Creative is focused on delivering a powerful sound design tool that allows developers to truly explore the art of creating compelling, immersive audio environments in games, Internet audio applications and interactive entertainment titles. The new features in EAX 3.0 leverage the power of the EMU10K1 processor in the Sound Blaster Live! family of audio accelerators to deliver a new level of intensity to the Environmental Audio entertainment experience. There are currently over seventy Environmental Audio titles, of which thirty-six are available today. For a complete list of titles available to date and titles in development, please visit Creative's Web site at www.sblive.com.

Creative's Approach to Sound Design in Interactive Audio

Creative's EAX leverages its industry-leading expertise and audio expertise from wholly-owned subsidiary, E-mu Systems, which has been delivering powerful audio production solutions for professional musicians and Hollywood sound designers for more than twenty-five years. With Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX), Creative's goal is to continue building on the base API by offering developers a full palette of sound design parameters for interactive audio applications. The programming and sound design concepts of EAX are specifically designed for a broad range of applications including games, education titles, simulations, Internet audio programs, Internet music and music creation. Creative has taken a phased approach to delivering these concepts through its popular EAX API by offering the ability to produce the most perceptually important effects first, giving them higher priority in a flexible application development and sound design process.

Phase 1: Providing a Sense of Environment with EAX 1.0

EAX builds on DirectSound 3D's positional audio capabilities with property set extensions. EAX 1.0 was designed to provide developers with the ability to create a convincing sense of environment in entertainment titles and a realistic sense of distance between the player and audio events. EAX 1.0 provides a variety of environments with different characteristics of reflections and reverberation, different room types and/or room size. The API also allows for customizing late reverberation parameters (decay time, damping, level) and automatic level management according to distance. EAX 1.0 provides for enhancement of distance cues on a per source basis. Many developers have been using this API to add interactive audio environments to 3D games.

Phase 2: Building on the Environment with EAX 2.0

EAX 2.0 builds on the ability of EAX 1.0 to create a more compelling and realistic environment with tools that allow simulating the audio effect of partitions between environments and obstacles within environments. These features include occlusion and obstruction and can be applied on each individual audio source. In addition, EAX 2.0 provides adjustable reflections with a more complete reverb interface, a tunable air absorption model and an improved source directivity model. Creative will be providing a driver update supporting the features of this new standard through its Live!Ware program.

Phase 3: Adding More Realism, More Flexibility with EAX 3.0 Features

EAX 3.0 builds on EAX 2.0 with powerful, easy to use sound design tools. EAX 3.0 introduces new levels of realism to interactive audio applications. The new tools include the ability to use and tune localized reflection clusters or isolated individual reflections, to continuously ``morph'' between environments, and to further improve distance rendering and naturalness with Creative's proprietary statistical reverberation model. These features allow the developer to create dynamic reverberant environments with superior, more robust distance cues and enhanced control over each audio event in the virtual sound scene.

[Adam Bluhm]

would you go so far as to say ditch the whole idea of pc to receiver to speakers for now?

If you have the receiver and the speakers already, go for it. It's cool.

To my knowledge I can only do so much with my setup, though. Doom 3 doesn't need EAX to support 5.1 surround, but I'm not familiar with any other games that can do that, so my 5.1 gaming ability is limited.

It's worth it, though. I spent an extra ~$42 on three mini-jack to RCA cables at Best Buy and also spent a few hours trying to work out the kinks. But in the end it was an educational experience. I learned a lot about pc audio and tonight will be the first night I game with Doom in the dark with full surround.

BTW, if you're curious, my audio setup is a Denon 1802 with JBL Studio speakers all around. It's a budget home theater setup, IMO, but it packs a nice punch in my moderate size room. My friends and family don't think it's a budget system, though. When the see it, find out how much I spent on it and HEAR it, their jaws drop.

[stevenmh]

would you go so far as to say ditch the whole idea of pc to receiver to speakers for now?

I have my Audigy 2 ZS sending 8 analog signals to my 7.1 receiver using a pair of camcorder cables and a monster cable. I love it. I only use it for games, and for that it's much, much better than the Soundstorm I used to use. Back when I had my Soundstorm system I didn't realize that it was only outputting PCM in games over the optical connection... had I known that I would have gone with the Audigy right away. I would think that movies and music would be good also if you want to use it for that.

[urbanokt]

you have all given me great info here and i thank you for that. i have decided to purchase a high quality sound card rather than go with onboard sound. with the info here and some grueling eye reddening hours of research, i think i have narrowed my choices to two and was wondering if someone could give me any personal experience or knowledge on these cards.
dmx 6 fire (mentioned above, sounds like a great card)
terratec aureon 7.1 universe

one question, do these both do the decoding themselves or do they send the pure, raw signal to my ht receiver for decoding? thanks in advance.

[Activate: AMD]

can you use the digital OUT on an Audigy 2 ZS to connect to a receiver?

[Neoguri]

IF you have a 5.1 source, such as a movie dvd, and a software DVD player that supports (full versions of PowerDVD, WinDVD, not the trial version), then a home theater processor/reciever will decode the 5.1 signal, which will be passed through the spdif output. I have done it with numerous onboard and separate sound cards.

Just wanted to say that I have Powerdvd 4.0 which came with my dvdrom and only has 2channel capabilities but CAN output 5.1 through the spdif.

[lidistick]

you have all given me great info here and i thank you for that. i have decided to purchase a high quality sound card rather than go with onboard sound. with the info here and some grueling eye reddening hours of research, i think i have narrowed my choices to two and was wondering if someone could give me any personal experience or knowledge on these cards.
dmx 6 fire (mentioned above, sounds like a great card)
terratec aureon 7.1 universe

one question, do these both do the decoding themselves or do they send the pure, raw signal to my ht receiver for decoding? thanks in advance.

for real cheap, the Chaintech AV-710 will do the same thing; ie output a digital signal to the receiver.

all of them should be able to send a raw undecoded signal to the HT receiver which should be able to do the decoding

[lidistick]

can you use the digital OUT on an Audigy 2 ZS to connect to a receiver?

Yes you can.

Stereo minijack to mono Coax cable.
Audigy 2's digital output is permanently on.
go to audio HQ and go to decoders and hit SPDIF bypass.
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.p...02&postcount=8
Cheers.

[IAmGhostDog]

one question, do these both do the decoding themselves or do they send the pure, raw signal to my ht receiver for decoding? thanks in advance.

The Terratec DMX 6fire has:

1 digital stereo in- and output (TOS-Link, optical) on front module š 24-bit/96 kHz

1 digital stereo in- and output (Cinch, coaxial) on front module š 24-bit/96 kHz

I use PowerDVD v5.0 full retail to watch DVD's on my computer.
By selecting 6 speakers (5.1) or 4 for that matter I get true surround in movies. How that would translate in your situation I can not be sure having never tried it.



I use this card for everything audio.
Games. (Supports EAX2)
Music. (.wav/digital, analog/vinyl) Totally happy.
And of course watching DVD's as I've just mentioned.
And for me there is so much more that this card offers.

I convert vinyl to .wav



I also plug my guitar into my Line6 POD and run the POD via MIDI into my front module, headphones on, and I'm rocking.



Have a look here if you haven't already done so.

Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 Thoughts/Impressions

[Paladin26]

Hey everyone, you all seem really knowledgeable, so I thought maybe i'd post my ongoing saga I've been having.
I have a DFI Lanparty rev. B Nforce 2 mobo, and was running digital coax out to my cambridge soundworks megatheater reciever. It was giving me problems, apparently the reciever couldnt filter out the power fluctuations inherant with onboard sound, so i grabbed an audigy 2 zs (non platinum) I ran a minijack-> rca connection out of the digital out jack on the audigy 2, into an rca splitter, which leads into my Monster digital coax and then to the reciever. I installed everything, but am only getting 2 channels. i've triple checked that the reciever is set to recieve the digital, but all i get is stereo L/R.
any advice?

[lidistick]

are you getting stereo for music or for DVD's?

if you want 5.1 for your motherboard...
go to NV mixer,
Enable dolby Digital encoding
Enable Create Center channel
Enable Create LFE.

that should sort it out