Need advice need new speaker system

[Disasterpiece]

Hey Guys,

I have just build a new PC.
SoundCard:
Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D THX PCIE Fatal1ty Champion Sound Card SB1354

Connecting Via Optical.

These speakers will be used for Gaming, 3D Blu Ray, Music.
Debating between wired and wireless.
Preferable 5.1.
Room Size: bed room approx 5.5m by 3.6m
(But at some stage will be for Lounge room).
Also I'm in Australia.

Budget preferable (+/-) 1,000 but will spend up to 1,500.

Thanks, any advice which speakers or any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

[afterlife2]

2 pairs of these. Out Of Stock, but keep watching for re-stock: EMP Tek E41-B Bookshelf Speaker (2012 Summer Sales Event)
Center: EMP Tek E56Ci Large Center Channel Speaker (2012 Summer Sales Event)
Sub: Newegg.com - Energy S10.3 Subwoofer Each

All under $1,000

 

[LB06]

Is there a particular reason you bought that sound card? If you intend to use optical, basically all circuitry in that card will be bypassed, rendering the investment useless. Optical also puts you at a disadvantage with regards to PC gaming, because regular multichannel audio that normally comes from games (LPCM) don't fit over an optical S/PDIF link. It'll be downmixed to stereo. As opposed to movies, games obviously can't contain a pre-encoded Dolby Digital or DTS stream; so if you want surround you're going to have to do on-the-fly transcoding to Dobly (using Dolby Digital Live). This is a lossy and CPU consuming process. You're much better off with hdmi (which is not available) or analogue if you ask me.

You really need to think about the setup first. I get the feeling you're still thinking in terms of PC audio. But with that kind of budget you can leave that behind and upgrade to the HiFi realm. It does work a bit differently than PC audio though. Usually, and especially for surround, this involves an (active) A/V receiver & subwoofer and 5 passive speakers. For instance, those speakers that afterlife2 suggested are passive speakers (unlike normal active PC speakers which have their own amp), so you need an external amp/receiver to drive the speakers. No way you're going to be able to drive them with a sound card only. So while I have no doubt that that's a good suggestion, it is incomplete at least.

Question is if you can make room for a receiver in your bed room. It'll give you many advantages in terms of flexibility, because because a receiver will allow you to connect multiple devices in various ways (including hdmi), incrementally upgrade or add speakers and it supports hd codecs and of course plain multichannel LPCM. Also, there's a huge variety of passive speakers to choose from.

 

[Disasterpiece]

Thanks for the reply's.
PC specs
CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K
Mobo:Asus RAMPAGE IV EXTREME
GPU:Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 690
RAM:32G CORSAIR
Case:Thermaltake LVL 10 GT
HDD:OS Drive OCZ Vertex 4
PSU: Enermax Platimax 90+


I got the soundcard because the onboard optical didn't support 5.1, so had to set the receiver to PL II.
After noticing a big sound quality difference between analogue and Optical I couldn't go back to analogue.

I had just computer speakers Logitech z5500 and these stuffed-up sent back.
Logitech no longer make them so got a full refund, decided why not get some decent speakers
That's when I found this website!


Yes, I will be able to make room for a receiver/amp.

So would I connect Optical from Sound-card to the receiver/amp?
Also what speaker system would you recommend?

Thanks.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I got the soundcard because the onboard optical didn't support 5.1, so had to set the receiver to PL II.

I get the feeling you're more of IT guy than audio - Well me too, except I been here long enough to pickup a thing or two

First - LB06 is right, connecting with optical disables MOST processing done by SB - I assume you talking NOT about running 5.1 music or movies, rather than surround gaming and you don't get 5.1 on your receiver - right?
but it does work with Creative SB - Am I right so far? If so - the feature your mobo missing is Dolby Digital Live or DTS Live - this does convert gaming surround sound into multichannel...

That said if you use Optical out on mobo and play a movie w/ surround sound - it must support 5.1 and if it doesn't check your driver(s) and/or settings

I used to use AC3Filter software back in the day - I'm not sure if its still relevant

edit:
This Mobo does support it, I guess Asus wanted to bring supreme overclocking before anything else

 

[LB06]

@BoredSysAdmin: I think what disasterpiece has been doing is downmixing to stereo and then let his Z-5500 upmix using DPL2.

This creates fake surround, because almost all spatial information will have been lost. As soon as the downmixing is done, all the sound info will be flattened into two channels. The system can no longer tell whether a certain part of for example the right channel used to be part of the front right, the surround right, the center of the .1 (LFE/subwoofer). All DPL2 does is guess a bit and put some reverb echo of the front channels on the surround channels. This result is not very impressive. You can no longer tell whether a sound is coming from behind you of from ahead of you.

What I would do, concretely, is this: try and get a refund and/or sell your sound card, get a receiver with 5 speakers and a powered sub and connect your PC via hdmi to the receiver. Your GTX 670 no doubt has hdmi output and to make it very simple: hdmi trumps all. Like with optical you have digital signal, but like with analogue you can also send discrete surround signals over the cable, meaning you no longer have fake surround or need ugly hacks like DD Live. Not to mention that hdmi also carries video, so you only need to have one cable rather than two.

To make a long story short: don't bother with optical, sound cards or analogue anymore. Get a receiver, go all-out hdmi and let the receiver do all the work. This makes sound cards obsolete. Creative is NOT happy, which makes me very happy , but that's beside the point.

 

[KEW]

To make a long story short: don't bother with optical, sound cards or analogue anymore. Get a receiver, go all-out hdmi and let the receiver do all the work. This makes sound cards obsolete. Creative is NOT happy, which makes me very happy , but that's beside the point.

Good to know. Is this what you would also do for just playing stereo?

 

[Disasterpiece]

I get the feeling you're more of IT guy than audio - Well me too, except I been here long enough to pickup a thing or two

First - LB06 is right, connecting with optical disables MOST processing done by SB - I assume you talking NOT about running 5.1 music or movies, rather than surround gaming and you don't get 5.1 on your receiver - right?
but it does work with Creative SB - Am I right so far? If so - the feature your mobo missing is Dolby Digital Live or DTS Live - this does convert gaming surround sound into multichannel...

That said if you use Optical out on mobo and play a movie w/ surround sound - it must support 5.1 and if it doesn't check your driver(s) and/or settings

I used to use AC3Filter software back in the day - I'm not sure if its still relevant

Yeah spot on I'm a computer tech, audio to this extent is new to me.
Correct the motherboard does work 5.1 on movies but is missing Dolby Digital Live/DTS Live for Gaming that's why I got the sound-card.

@BoredSysAdmin: I think what disasterpiece has been doing is downmixing to stereo and then let his Z-5500 upmix using DPL2.

This creates fake surround, because almost all spatial information will have been lost. As soon as the downmixing is done, all the sound info will be flattened into two channels. The system can no longer tell whether a certain part of for example the right channel used to be part of the front right, the surround right, the center of the .1 (LFE/subwoofer). All DPL2 does is guess a bit and put some reverb echo of the front channels on the surround channels. This result is not very impressive. You can no longer tell whether a sound is coming from behind you of from ahead of you.

What I would do, concretely, is this: try and get a refund and/or sell your sound card, get a receiver with 5 speakers and a powered sub and connect your PC via hdmi to the receiver. Your GTX 670 no doubt has hdmi output and to make it very simple: hdmi trumps all. Like with optical you have digital signal, but like with analogue you can also send discrete surround signals over the cable, meaning you no longer have fake surround or need ugly hacks like DD Live. Not to mention that hdmi also carries video, so you only need to have one cable rather than two.

To make a long story short: don't bother with optical, sound cards or analogue anymore. Get a receiver, go all-out hdmi and let the receiver do all the work. This makes sound cards obsolete. Creative is NOT happy, which makes me very happy , but that's beside the point.

That was exactly what I was doing, but like you mentioned wasn't very good.

My Graphics GTX 690 doesn't have a hdmi output, but has DVI-I*2, DVI-D, Mini display port which may beable to connect Display Port to HDMI adapter.
But would require SPDIF connector from GPU to mobo for audio, I'll have to verity that the gigabyte gtx 690 has SPDIF when I get home.

But SPDIF's has limited bandwidth so can't handle lossless audio, Or is it still worth going down this path providing my GPU does have spdif?


Is this setup below possible and workout well even if it pretty much makes the soundcard useless?

I'll just hold onto the soundcard because more flexibility with different setups.
Run through the soundcard don't enable Dolby Digital Live, connect to the receiver through optical and let the receiver do the work?

 

[LB06]

There's a big misunderstanding here. Hdmi handles both video and audio. Up to 8 channel, 192 kHz, 24-bit audio in LPCM (=games), TrueHD and DTS-HD bitstreams. So at least for the time being, everything one would want.

You cannot do this with S/PDIF regardless of whether you have a very expensive sound card or a very cheap one. The only thing the more expensive card could bring to the table is the workaround and ugly hack called Dolby Digital Live and maybe better drivers (but with Creative I wouldn't bet on it).

If you card has Dual-Mode DisplayPort you can just convert it to hdmi with a passive adapter (like with DVI-I to VGA). No more the 20th century technology (S/PDIF) with all its limitations or analogue connections that require you to have an expensive sound card with a relatively good DAC.