Question about s/pdif out to 8 ch into AVR

Jim Wy

Hey guys:
Looking for ideas on how to set up my computer to output my mp3's on my comp into the 6/8 channel in of my HK 330.
My set-up is this...
My comp has 6- 1/8" jacks on my onboard aud of the back of my comp, one is line-in, one is mic-in, while the other four are paired as follows... ftl/ftr sub/ctr sdl/sdr and rrl/rrr. THey obviously match the 8 ch in on the back of my AVR. The AVR has 1/4" (edit:RCA) in's tho.
Question is what type of outs/splitters/adapters am I looking for? Every Rat Shack and FutureShop I go to only has 1/8" stereo male to 2 1/4" female adapters, with both 1/4" outs carrying the same signal. I need to go from 1/8" male 2 channel to two separate 1/4" female single channels. I also obviously need to do this 4 times total. THe reason I want to go full nuts with 8 channel is that I eventually want to use my comp as an up-coverting DVD player to 720p native. Any websites, b&m stores (preferably in Canada) or ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Jim

Tritonman

Your AVR330 is not using 1/4" inch inputs..they are RCA. If you want to connect it the way you are mentioning you would 1/8" to RCA. Which are easy to find. The best way to do this would be to connect your Coaxial out from your motherboard to the coaxial input on your receiver. That is..if your motherboard has one. That way your receiver would be doing the digital conversion and processing for surround etc. If you choose the method you stated above then your computer would have to do the digital decoding. Im pretty sure the AVR does not decode the "direct in".

A cable like this...

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/RCA-mini-spdif.html

What motherboard are you using.?

Jim Wy

Mainboard

Intel mainboard. THe sound is onboard sound. Sorry, my mistake about the rca/ 1/4" terminology.

Question about the cables you pointed me to. I think I would need stereo mini to two mono RCA would I not?? Considering that each out of my comp is actually two outputs (sub/ctr...ftl/ftr...etc)

Jim

Tritonman

The motherboard has additional headers on it for for additional Audio-Outs and S/PDIF. I would use the sp/dif header and use a single wire..that should solve everything for you.

No biggie on the terminology..just wanted to make sure you werent getting the wrong thing.

TheReaper

A little late (been elsewhere), I second Tritonmans sugestion of using the SPDIF output. If your DVD Decoder software is capable, you should be able to do a direct digital passthrough of DD and DTS to your receiver (so your receiver does the audio decoding). I have my pc with spdif out on an intel 945g based motherboard. Set up for digital passthrough on dvds (my receiver gets the DDx.x or DTS stream), and other sources come across as PCM stereo (which I have set to 96k).

Jim Wy

I second Tritonmans sugestion of using the SPDIF output.

Oh man, you guys are gonna love me (noob here)

I'm an electrician. I'm used to big wires, and big smoke and sparks when things don't work right. :cool:

Actually I'm not that bad, I'm also trying to turn my computer (my DLP TV set has both rgb and hdmi inputs) into an upconverting 720p dvd player so that the comp will pull the info (aud. and vid.), delay it a bit, fill in the 480 lines that all dvd's have with 720 lines (equivalent to 3/2 pulldown) and show the dvd as a 720p (HDTV) movie. Still playing tho.

I'm more of a videophile. THe audio bug got me when I realised my TV setup (Panny 50DL54) was a lot better than my dinky audio set-up I had. Bought 2 RTi28's and the rest is history. Just got my FX300i's Friday from someone here at PolkForum.

So if you don't mind guys, could you type sllloowwllllyyyy and use small words?? Starting with my board, what do I need to make everything worthwhile in Jimmyland??

Jim

FutureAudio

It might be a good idea to have an analog single wire connection ( 2ch ) to your HK even when you have an optical or coaxial digital connection to it.

Digital isnt always better.

Dennis Gardner

If no SPDIF, you need the 1/8" stereo to dual RCA adaptor. You will need 3 for 5.1 or 4 for 7.1. They are basically portable CD player to home stereo adaptors.

Good Luck!!!!

Try this:

ledhed

Your saying that your motherboard has multichannel built in? If you could take a picture of the connections your talking about, it may make it a little easire on us and you.

Dennis Gardner

ledhed wrote:

Your saying that your motherboard has multichannel built in? If you could take a picture of the connections your talking about, it may make it a little easire on us and you.

It is in his first post:

My set-up is this...
My comp has 6 1/8" jacks on my onboard aud of the back of my comp, one is line-in, one is mic-in, while the other four are paired as follows... ftl/ftr sub/ctr sdl/sdr and rrl/rrr. THey obviously match the 8 ch in on the back of my AVR.

Tritonman

Dennis Gardner wrote:

If no SPDIF, you need the 1/8" stereo to dual RCA adaptor. You will need 3 for 5.1 or 4 for 7.1. They are basically portable CD player to home stereo adaptors.

Good Luck!!!!

Try this:

The board has a header on it that will accept an add-on spdif out.

Unfortunately he cant use the 1/8 to dual rca because he wants to use his inputs on his receiver. So he would need to run a seperate wire for each input connection since the computer will be doing the decoding.

Dennis Gardner

Tritonman wrote:

The board has a header on it that will accept an add-on spdif out.

I understand that, but he doesn't and he is required to use analog connections if he doesn't add the SPDIF. His first post about SPDIF is wrong, since he currently doesn't have SPDIF, only analog.

This is the down side to using onboard audio. Its there to be used, but not top quality.

Dennis Gardner

Tritonman wrote:

Unfortunately he cant use the 1/8 to dual rca because he wants to use his inputs on his receiver.

Where did he say this?

He simply asked for 1/8" adaptors to go to his receiver.

Did I misread his first post like everyone else did?

Tritonman

Dennis Gardner wrote:

Where did he say this?

He simply asked for 1/8" adaptors to go to his receiver.

Did I misread his first post like everyone else did?

I was only saying he cant use the 1/8 to dual rca..he would need to use 1/8 to a single rca for each connection. He wants each connection to match the back of the 8 inputs on his receiver.

Tritonman

Dennis Gardner wrote:

I understand that, but he doesn't and he is required to use analog connections if he doesn't add the SPDIF. His first post about SPDIF is wrong, since he currently doesn't have SPDIF, only analog.

This is the down side to using onboard audio. Its there to be used, but not top quality.

It would ultimately be cheaper and easier to purchase the spdif header imo. Otherwise he is running 8 cables to the inputs on his receiver. He wants to use his 8 RCA inputs on his receiver like an SACD would.

Dennis Gardner

Each 1/8" jack is a stereo set. He simply needs 3 cables for 5.1 or 4 cables for 7.1.

This cable is what he needs..............

I've does this a number of times on onboard audio sets. These cables separate the stereo 1/8" into 2 rca male jacks that go into the 5.1 or 7.1 inputs on the receiver. Less than $20.

I agree with most of you on here that SPDIF is the better audio way to go, but without a different sound card or SPDIF port, he asked how to get the sound from the jacks he has on the computer to the jacks he has on the receiver. Am I the only one that gets it?

I'm done.

Jim Wy

First of a a MAJOR thanks to The Reaper, Tritonman, and Dennis for answering my questions I had, (raised a few new ones tho :rolleyes: )
The only reason I mentioned about the 1/8" jacks out to the rca in's of my H/K was due to the fact that they were the most obvious physical way to get from point A to point B. The s/pdif terminology is still throwing me for a loop though.

Just so I got this straight, I'm basically relegated to two different avenues...
1. Analog. Dennis's cables from computer to rec. and everything is done in 5 minutes but common consensus is that the quality will not be that great. (good but not as good as it can be).

2. Digital. S/pdif outs from my board (still reading to find out what the hell a s/pdif out looks like, I'm assuming a co/ax-toslink single-cable equivalent) to one of the digital in's of my receiver. Better sound once I get it figured out, probably involving the help of the "starving University student" that helped me piece together my original PC in the first place. He made his $100 and I got a $1400 box for $1000+ including labour.

Below is more info on my board if anyone's interested

My ASUS Mainboard straight from the ASUS website

Thanks again.

Jim

Dennis Gardner

If building a solid HTPC is your goal, I would invest in a seperate sound card like one of the Soundblaster or Audigy cards from Creative. These carry the onboard SPDIF interface you need and take the load off your main CPU for audio. I have an Audigy 2ZS and it does the job nicely. I do agree with the other guys that allowing your receiver to decode your digital formats will yield your best sound.

Good luck,

DG

TheReaper

In looking at the asus site, spdif is mentioned in the board overview, but is not listed on the i/o connectors. So you may want to look at the back of your computer to see what you have. SPDIF comes in two flavors, coaxial and optical

If your motherboard has coaxial SPDIF, it will be by your other audio sockets, it will be an RCA socket, hopefully labeled SPDIF. There is also a variation on this, where one of the 1/8" sockets gets switched in software to spdif, but that is a whole other mess.

If your motherboard has optical SPDIF, it will be by your other audio sockets, it will be a square socket (about 1cm) with a little trap door covering the hole (so you don't look into the light), hopefully labeled SPDIF.

If you don't have a built in spdif, then your choices are the stereo splitter cables, or get a sound card.

manchild

I think the person in the original post has the same question as me. I have a motherboard with a s/pdif out. The problem is it is in the form of pins. I have 3 pins on my motherboard labeled spdif. One is ground, one is signal, and the last one is +5 volts. I am trying to find a cable to plug into my mother board that will terminate into a coaxial output. I figure the +5 volts is used for optical output, but I'm guessing a coaxial cable would be cheaper.

Anybody no where to find one? Thanks!

malikarshad

manchild wrote:

I think the person in the original post has the same question as me. I have a motherboard with a s/pdif out. The problem is it is in the form of pins. I have 3 pins on my motherboard labeled spdif. One is ground, one is signal, and the last one is +5 volts. I am trying to find a cable to plug into my mother board that will terminate into a coaxial output. I figure the +5 volts is used for optical output, but I'm guessing a coaxial cable would be cheaper.

Anybody no where to find one? Thanks!

What u are refering to is the Header to connect an additional SPDIF in/out card to your motherboard. I had done this before with my ASUS motherboard. You have to buy this additonal SPDIF card and plug the cable to the header provided on your mobo.

manchild

malikarshad wrote:

What u are refering to is the Header to connect an additional SPDIF in/out card to your motherboard. I had done this before with my ASUS motherboard. You have to buy this additonal SPDIF card and plug the cable to the header provided on your mobo.

Does anybody know where to pick one up?

malikarshad

manchild wrote:

Does anybody know where to pick one up?

I bought mine from newegg but it really depends on what kind of mobo u have. You might want to check your mobo mfg website if they sell it as an additional accessory. There may be compatibilty issue of buy a different mfg than your mobo.
What's your mobo by the way?

dpowell

Why not add a Sound Blaster Audigy with the live drive to your system? It has both the optical and rca digital outputs for connecting up to a receiver. I have the old 5.1 card and it works great! The newer cards support both DD and DTS. These are a lot easier to configure and you have less chance of picking up noise from a grounding loop when connecting directly from the ports on the back of the card. I know it's more money but, in my opinion, worth it.