Sound Card Wiring Hook Up

Drastlin

Okay, I just bought a Turtle Beach sound card that supports 7.1 and 5.1. I only have a 5.1 system and I was wondering the best way to hook it up. One option is using the 5.1 optical out which is simple enough. The other way would be to use a cable that converts headset jacks to rca. The sound card jacks are front, rear, sub, and surround. Since the headset-rca cable splits the the signal into a stereo signal instead of a direct connection, like SACD player, (sumten like that) is this connection inferior to optical. Any opinions would be appreciated. Thanks!

TheReaper

This is my opinion:

Unless your sound card costs more than your receiver, your receiver will probably do a better job at the digital to analog conversion.

An optical connection does not make an electrical connection between your receiver and your computer, so it can't contribute to a ground loop. This is a plus.

The downside, you only get pcm stereo or spdif passthru (for dvd playback), unless you have Dolby Live or DTS Connect. If you play games that have multiple speaker outputs, this may make a differance to you, and favor the analog connection.

Drastlin

TheReaper wrote:

This is my opinion:

Unless your sound card costs more than your receiver, your receiver will probably do a better job at the digital to analog conversion.

An optical connection does not make an electrical connection between your receiver and your computer, so it can't contribute to a ground loop. This is a plus.

The downside, you only get pcm stereo or spdif passthru (for dvd playback), unless you have Dolby Live or DTS Connect. If you play games that have multiple speaker outputs, this may make a differance to you, and favor the analog connection.

My Sound card does have Dolby Live, said something like it converts all signals to 5.1 on the fly on the descripition when I bought it. I have it hooked up using the optical port and everything seems to be working fine. Just making sure I have it set up the most efficient way.