5.1 setup. For the love of god I hope someone can help me.

[seh6183]

I don't know if this is the right forum or place for this but maybe someone can help me or direct me to where I can get help.

I have been dealing with an issue for close to a month and a half now and it is starting to fry my brain because I can't figure it out. Let me tell you my setup. I have a 5.1 surround system that is connected through 3.5mm connectors. It has 3 connections, the front channels, the rear channels, and the center/sub channel. This is how all computer surround setups are. I am taking a digital 5.1 signal from an xbox360 over a fiber optic cable to a 5.1 decoder. I then plug my speakers (which have their own amp) into the decoder and adjust volume and levels from the amp. All of this is fine.

My problem is, there is no EQ adjustment on my amp or the decoder and all of the sounds are disgustingly flat. I am looking for either a simple in-line Equalizer or maybe another amp or decoder that has EQ adjustment. Thank you in advance.

 

[hospitalityjoe]

5.1

Sounds like you have it figured out all on your own after a month and a half of stewing.
If you cannot contour the sound from what you have hooked up then yes an equalizer would help out. Am sure there are some equalizers out there that would suit your needs easily.
Joe, a cut above.

 

[markw]

Looks to me like you need one eq channel for each of the five channels and you would insert them between the decoder and the amplified speakers.

Six channels if you want to eq the .1 channel as well, but that might be a waste unless you get a special eq for subwoofers

 

[m_vanmeter]

is your source for the audio a desktop or laptop computer ?

If so, what software are you "playing" the audio through ?

I agree, when digital audio is played through some simple audio players (Windows Media player comes to mind), the output is flat and un-interesting. You might consider some add-on software that gives you better EQ options on the source, instead of an external EQ.

 

[seh6183]

Unfortunately I am unable to use any software to control EQ as this setup is not going through a computer. I would need a stand alone hardware EQ that goes in between the speakers and decoder. Do you guys know of any compact hardware EQ's that would fit for this situation? Thank you in advance.

 

[selden]

A multichannel graphic equalizer isn't going to be particularly compact: it needs to have as many rows of sliders as you have channels.

What's your budget for this?
How high an audio quality do you want?

Good multichannel graphic equalizers start at about $1000 and go up. Way up.
Stereo graphic equalizers start at about $100, so three of them, for example, would cost less than that.

However, it seems to me that it'd be cheaper and more effective to get a (used) preamp/processor or a receiver which has line-level preamp outputs. It would accept the digital audio output from your game box and drive your speakers with its line-level outputs.

 

[seh6183]

This setup is already amplified and I am able to adjust volume levels for each channel. I basically am trying to adjust treble and that's it. And if at all possible the lows for my sub. But again, treble is all I'm looking.