kirbysdl
Audiophyte
I know that some of what I need could be best answered in other forums, but my situation is one of general confusion, so hopefully this is a reasonable starting place.
In a nutshell, I am buying my first home and want to build my first home theater, starting with the audio at a pretty strict upper limit of $1500 (those mortgage payments are killer!).
===About Me
I am definitely not an audiophile. I have neither the ear nor the budget to spend a lot on equipment, nor do I think I have to in order to get decent sound. Also, since I've been using crappy 2.1 computer speakers all my life thusfar, just about anything I get will be sure to sound worlds better. I do value quality over sheer volume, and this combined with the fact that I'm sharing a structural wall with a neighbor means I can't blast things (too much) anyway.
===Location
http://www.speakeasy.org/~curby/filelib/floorplan_upper.gif
My first choice would be the living room (bottom of floorplan_upper). The ceiling slants up from the kitchen area to about 12 feet at the end of the living room. In this situation, should I put the front of the system (TV/etc.) towards the right or the bottom? I'm already considering blackout curtains so errant light/glare issues should not be a problem. Does the lack of a wall between the living and dining rooms wreak havoc with the sound (especially if I go with smaller speakers)? Would it be better to place speakers along the walls even if that means they're 10+ feet from the listener?
Feel free to photo/paintshop the image for speaker placement suggestions. =)
If there's no way this could work, I might try a bedroom, but that would be pretty far from ideal.
=== Other Equipment
As I said above, I'm concentrating on audio first. The primary sound source will be my desktop computer (Windows XP, recent hardware). I currently use a CRT monitor for DVDs, video games, and just general computing. With all sorts of HD technologies that are currently relatively young and expensive, I can wait for the dust to settle before getting a TV.
Eventually, I will probably be including a HDTV of some kind (and probably a DVD player), so my purchasing decision should be made with that in mind. I might also get an x-box, though that's really low priority.
=== Expected Uses
Playing music, watching DVDs, and playing computer games are all important to me.
=== Planning on buying
Some sort of sound card for the computer
Some sort of amp/receiver, preferably 7.1-capable
Either a 7.1 speaker set or 5.1 speaker set
=== Sound Card
How should I best get sound from the computer to the amp/receiver? I would like to keep it digital between the computer and the receiver to reduce cable clutter, maximize quality, and force the sound processing to be done on the receiver. On the other hand, at least some cards don't offer 7.1 digital outputs, so I will need to use analogs or a different sound card if I choose to go with 7.1 speakers. Assuming I'll be using SPDIF there, should I go coax or optical, and why? Optical cables seemed really expensive about a year ago, so maybe I could save a bit and go with coax unless there is a good reason not to.
The type of SPDIF I choose will also affect what sound card I can get. I'm currently looking at Turtle Beach, M-audio, and (sigh) Creative cards under $100. I have what seems like a strange set of requirements: I need a lot of support for sound/gaming APIs and a friendly, interoperable SPDIF output for going to the receiver, but ultimately a dumb card and dumb software will do as the card shouldn't be doing much processing.
TB Catalina - New gamer card, optical digital 7.1 out with LPCM/AC3 autoselect (whatever that means)
M-audio Revolution 7.1 - Coax digital out (Manual states LPCM/AC-3, doesn't say how many channels on this output)
Creative Audigy 2 ZS - Coax digital out with only 5.1 support, best game support, bad reputation for sound quality, software bloat, CPU-use, etc. (I couldn't find the manual online, and the specs are less than encouraging)
Any other cheap cards with decent game support? I know that if I'm going for music-only, I have many more choices, but I still play games. =)
Creative cards support up to EAX v4.0 while the other manufacturers support up to 2.0. How likely is it that support for more recent APIs will be added to the TB/m-audio cards through driver updates, or does support depend on the chip? Do you know if EAX 4.0 games are at least somewhat backwards compatible with EAX 2.0, or will such games only play in stereo with a EAX 2.0 card?
More considerations: How painless will it be to use the setup? I would like for my stereo music to be expanded to all channels, games and DVDs that support 3D tech to use all channels intelligently, and games/DVDs that don't support 3D tech to be expanded out as well as possible to all channels. It seems that many manufacturers like m-audio like the idea of application-dependent profiles, but if the drivers are intelligent enough to decide how to act on its own without my intervention, that would be ideal. Do you know if any manufacturers will remember my preferences and automatically select them in the future, for example?
How is software quality from these three manufacturers? I know the TBSC drivers used to be terrible, but they've gotten better. Creative has a reputation for being bloaty and CPU-intensive... is this still true? With my intended "just playback" uses, will I be able to simply avoid installing a lot of Creative software (like mixing, authoring, editing, ripping/burning, whatnot)? At a basic level, are the drivers stable?
One thing I'm deathly afraid of is crackling or skipping playback. Sometimes, when a machine is sitting idle and not doing much besides playing music, there will be little flaws in playback that stem from the machine (playing the same segment of audio again will not repeatedly give the problem). For example, I get this on my IBM R40e laptop running Redhat Linux 9 with generic drivers, and rarely but occasionally using my Asus P4P800E's onboard sound in Windows XP. I think this is the fault of the sound card/driver, since the other hardware should be plenty fast enough. Assuming what I just said makes sense, has anyone experienced this with any of the cards mentioned above?
In a nutshell, I am buying my first home and want to build my first home theater, starting with the audio at a pretty strict upper limit of $1500 (those mortgage payments are killer!).
===About Me
I am definitely not an audiophile. I have neither the ear nor the budget to spend a lot on equipment, nor do I think I have to in order to get decent sound. Also, since I've been using crappy 2.1 computer speakers all my life thusfar, just about anything I get will be sure to sound worlds better. I do value quality over sheer volume, and this combined with the fact that I'm sharing a structural wall with a neighbor means I can't blast things (too much) anyway.
===Location
http://www.speakeasy.org/~curby/filelib/floorplan_upper.gif
My first choice would be the living room (bottom of floorplan_upper). The ceiling slants up from the kitchen area to about 12 feet at the end of the living room. In this situation, should I put the front of the system (TV/etc.) towards the right or the bottom? I'm already considering blackout curtains so errant light/glare issues should not be a problem. Does the lack of a wall between the living and dining rooms wreak havoc with the sound (especially if I go with smaller speakers)? Would it be better to place speakers along the walls even if that means they're 10+ feet from the listener?
Feel free to photo/paintshop the image for speaker placement suggestions. =)
If there's no way this could work, I might try a bedroom, but that would be pretty far from ideal.
=== Other Equipment
As I said above, I'm concentrating on audio first. The primary sound source will be my desktop computer (Windows XP, recent hardware). I currently use a CRT monitor for DVDs, video games, and just general computing. With all sorts of HD technologies that are currently relatively young and expensive, I can wait for the dust to settle before getting a TV.
Eventually, I will probably be including a HDTV of some kind (and probably a DVD player), so my purchasing decision should be made with that in mind. I might also get an x-box, though that's really low priority.
=== Expected Uses
Playing music, watching DVDs, and playing computer games are all important to me.
=== Planning on buying
Some sort of sound card for the computer
Some sort of amp/receiver, preferably 7.1-capable
Either a 7.1 speaker set or 5.1 speaker set
=== Sound Card
How should I best get sound from the computer to the amp/receiver? I would like to keep it digital between the computer and the receiver to reduce cable clutter, maximize quality, and force the sound processing to be done on the receiver. On the other hand, at least some cards don't offer 7.1 digital outputs, so I will need to use analogs or a different sound card if I choose to go with 7.1 speakers. Assuming I'll be using SPDIF there, should I go coax or optical, and why? Optical cables seemed really expensive about a year ago, so maybe I could save a bit and go with coax unless there is a good reason not to.
The type of SPDIF I choose will also affect what sound card I can get. I'm currently looking at Turtle Beach, M-audio, and (sigh) Creative cards under $100. I have what seems like a strange set of requirements: I need a lot of support for sound/gaming APIs and a friendly, interoperable SPDIF output for going to the receiver, but ultimately a dumb card and dumb software will do as the card shouldn't be doing much processing.
TB Catalina - New gamer card, optical digital 7.1 out with LPCM/AC3 autoselect (whatever that means)
M-audio Revolution 7.1 - Coax digital out (Manual states LPCM/AC-3, doesn't say how many channels on this output)
Creative Audigy 2 ZS - Coax digital out with only 5.1 support, best game support, bad reputation for sound quality, software bloat, CPU-use, etc. (I couldn't find the manual online, and the specs are less than encouraging)
Any other cheap cards with decent game support? I know that if I'm going for music-only, I have many more choices, but I still play games. =)
Creative cards support up to EAX v4.0 while the other manufacturers support up to 2.0. How likely is it that support for more recent APIs will be added to the TB/m-audio cards through driver updates, or does support depend on the chip? Do you know if EAX 4.0 games are at least somewhat backwards compatible with EAX 2.0, or will such games only play in stereo with a EAX 2.0 card?
More considerations: How painless will it be to use the setup? I would like for my stereo music to be expanded to all channels, games and DVDs that support 3D tech to use all channels intelligently, and games/DVDs that don't support 3D tech to be expanded out as well as possible to all channels. It seems that many manufacturers like m-audio like the idea of application-dependent profiles, but if the drivers are intelligent enough to decide how to act on its own without my intervention, that would be ideal. Do you know if any manufacturers will remember my preferences and automatically select them in the future, for example?
How is software quality from these three manufacturers? I know the TBSC drivers used to be terrible, but they've gotten better. Creative has a reputation for being bloaty and CPU-intensive... is this still true? With my intended "just playback" uses, will I be able to simply avoid installing a lot of Creative software (like mixing, authoring, editing, ripping/burning, whatnot)? At a basic level, are the drivers stable?
One thing I'm deathly afraid of is crackling or skipping playback. Sometimes, when a machine is sitting idle and not doing much besides playing music, there will be little flaws in playback that stem from the machine (playing the same segment of audio again will not repeatedly give the problem). For example, I get this on my IBM R40e laptop running Redhat Linux 9 with generic drivers, and rarely but occasionally using my Asus P4P800E's onboard sound in Windows XP. I think this is the fault of the sound card/driver, since the other hardware should be plenty fast enough. Assuming what I just said makes sense, has anyone experienced this with any of the cards mentioned above?