so i have just gotten rid of my creative 5.1 pc speakers, as they were becoming a bit temperamental. and a friend has given me his pioneer 5.1 home entertainment system which i have just rigged up to my PC.

the immediate sound is of a better quality than i was getting before, but there is a definate loss somewhere along the way, due to my soundcard, as it is only an onboard soundcard.

i have every intention of buying a decent soundcard tomorrow, but before i do, i was made aware of something called 'bitperfect' a media player for audiophiles [apparently], that will play music at its optimum.

i was wondering if anyone knew where i can get this from for free, to give it a whirl, before i spend £60 on the soundcard i have seen.

also its worth noting that he connection from pioneer amp to PC, is phono [RCA] to mini-jack, which is no doubt a contributing factor to sound not being as good as it should. the soundcard i am thinking of buying has RCA inputs on it, but obviously i dont want to spend £60 [about $100] if i dont have to

what should i do?

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Bring it on down son, so you can get done, I got more styles than the miles to the sun,
Ninety three million five thousand flows, and heres one more for the HOoOoOoOOO'S!!!

The RCAs should NOT be plugged into the phono input on the receiver. Plug them into an Aux input.

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Last edited by shaw on Sep-24-2011 at 19:58

ah yes sorry... it is running from my standard audio output [the green minijack], to phonos via aux.

the centre speaker is taking most of the output, but front and back left/rights, arnt dishing out much at all. plus also, if i turn the Vol knob up high on the amp, and vol low on the pc, it sounds shit, if it have high vol on pc, and low vol on amp, its better, but still centre speaker is taking nearly all of the output

___________________

Bring it on down son, so you can get done, I got more styles than the miles to the sun,
Ninety three million five thousand flows, and heres one more for the HOoOoOoOOO'S!!!

You've got it on some weird matrixing setting. Try switching surround modes.

And yes, definitely just max out the PC output. The moment the amp is actually amplifying the signal, the distortion levels go through the roof.

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> S u s h i p u n k . P h o t o g r a p h y <

ah roger roger.

my mate forgot to bring me round the remote, so i couldnt change any settings, ill give that a blast tomorrow, cheers rufus

___________________

Bring it on down son, so you can get done, I got more styles than the miles to the sun,
Ninety three million five thousand flows, and heres one more for the HOoOoOoOOO'S!!!

An onboard soundcard should be more than sufficient for regular multimedia use. Double checked my intel, and according to wikipedia, integrated soundcards have been providing "something akin to full Sound Blaster compatibility" since the mid-00's.

Regarding the sound quality issue, I see you said you're connecting it with a mini jack->rca cable. I know at least that on one of the speaker systems I've had, that were similar to yours, the pseudo-surround it provided when fed only 2 channels was atrocious compared to when I connected it with a cable that could handle 5 point 1 channels.

And as shaw said, never low in-high out on the amp. I usually set the volume to around 90% out on the mixer, and at 100% (the middle) on VLC, seeing as not all stuff downloaded from the interwebs stay below 0dB.

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BA-DUM-TSS

quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

Last edited by itsamemario on Sep-29-2011 at 15:50

Could do with knowing what model the Pio is.

Basically, if it has optical, or even better HDMI input, then you can send the audio digitally for the amp to decode. This means that regardless of the quality of the soundcard, it simply passes the signal to the amp to decode, leaving the amp to do all the work.

Most modern amps will accept a digital optical signal.

So, ironically, you should be looking at a new graphics card, doesn't need to be expensive, with HDMI out, to send the audio to the amp. The amp will then pass the audio to the speakers, and if you're also sending video, you'll attach the video out from the amp to your monitor or TV screen.

It's all a bit of a minefield when you're new to it, but a bit of Googling should give you enough basic info to purchase with confidence, assuming your amp supports it.

If your amp only accepts analogue inputs, post back and we'll talk about that. Remember to post the model of the amp.