How to run Sound from my computer to Receiver / Sorround Sound Setup

[TOOdamnFRANK]

I am planning to run my computers audio to my reciever and send it to my 7.2 sorround sound setup and I am not sure how to run the sound form my computer to my receiver and its speakers to obtain the best quality of sound for my gaming and some mp3/digital music, and maybe a bluray once in a while (mostly i would use my ps3 for that)

1) Would I be better off running a toslink cable to send the signal, even though it only handles 5 (5.1)channels of sound, or would I get better sound using the HDMI out put on my video card?

2) I think ATI HD5970 has HDMI 1.3a and outputs a signal capable of carrying a 7.1/7.2 signal out to my receiver, but how good is the sound quality?

3) If I use the HDMI on my 5970 does anyone know what it uses to decode this sound or does it send it encoded? aka does it use any hardware to convert it to analog or does the sound stay digital to my receiver?

4) I am also considering a new soundcard instead of my onboard audio, would this make any difference at all since I will hopefully be using the HDMI out from my ATI HD5970 to send the sound to the receiver or does the video card have its own signal and bypass the use of the sound card all together? aka does the 5970 sending a signal via HDMI use the soundcard or its own audio processing?

I am wondering because I have a 7.2 channel home theater setup in the works;

Front L/R- Polk Audio Monitor 70

Center- Polk Audio CS2

Side L/R- Polk Audio Monitor 60

Rear L/R- Polk Audio Monitor 50

Subwoofers (X2)- Polk Audio PSW505 12"

Receiver- Onkyo TX-NR808

Console- 250GB PS3 Slim (now 750gb HDD, sound through HDMI)


Computer is as follows;

Motherboard- Asus P6X58D Premium

CPU- Intel Core i7 950 @4.2GHz (200 Blck x 21)

Corsair H50 Liquid Cooling w/ 2 Scythe 3000RPM fans in push/pull

Case- Corsair 800 Full Tower

OS HDD- 256GB Crucial C300 REAL SSD (SATA III / 6Gbs)

GAME HDD- 128GB Crucial C300 REAL SSD (SATA III / 6Gbs)

STORAGE HDD(s)- 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm (x2)

BACKUP HDD- 640GB Western Digital Black (contains back ups only)

BluRay- LG WH10LS30K 10X BluRay Burner

PSU- Corsair 1000HX Modular (1000watts)

GPU- Sapphire Overclocked Edition ATI HD5970

RAM - 6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600

OS- Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Monitors- Asus VE246H 24" (x3 in EYEFINITY)

Fan Controller - Scythe Kaze Ace

Case Fans Replaced - Scythe [120x38] 3000RPM (x2 in / x1 out) Antec Tricool (x2 out / x1 HDD fan) / 140mm Lain Li (HDD fan)

Considering Sound Cards - Asus Xense or Asus Essence (for headphones too)

[jawhog]

You're going to need a pretty nice sound card to do better than your receiver will. Send it all bitstreamed over the HDMI to your receiver and let your receiver to all the work. Don't know if you have a TV in the chain, or just using the monitor or what, but I found the only drag about using the HDMI out to receiver is that if you are just doing simple computing, you have to turn the reciever on to get the monitor going. Unless the 808 has the new HDMI-always active-pass through or whatever that's called.

[TOOdamnFRANK]

yes and no; a 52" inch 1080p HDTV is in the chain, but it's not used for the computer. It's instead used for our PS3 and Wii gaming / Television, DVD, and BluRay watching. Consumer HDTV's, as nice as they are, still dont have the amazing refresh rates, higher resolution capabilities, and all around quality of a monitor. Although they are starting to get a lot better as of late, they're still not just yet on par with a decent monitor.
Instead the computer is attached to its own three 24" inch monitors in "eyefinity" mode; ATI / AMD's multi-monitor setup that runs the computers display across all three monitors at once for an amazing 5760x1200 resolution, or 5802x1200 with bezel compensation, that windows and games effectively recognize as one massive monitor and not 3. It makes games alot more emersive and can give you and advantage in online FPS games, but it requires alot of graphic horsepower to run at a decent resolution. Luckily my current $1600 of video cards, (not computer just video cards, computer is around 5000 or 6000), handle it until i upgrade next year. Also my Tritton 5.1 PC gaming headphones, that have 8 speaker in each can, aka earcup, so I can play my games low key or late at night or if the woman is watching a something on the TV or listening to the radio.
So if the receiver is off I still have sound via the headphones or my tiny little 5.1 Logitech computer surround sound speakers around my desk. I just simply make two clicks and change my computer sound device to output through the on-board soundcard, or it does this on its own when I connect headphones to the front panel HD audio connectors on my case.
Sorry for the long reply, as I have said before on my previous thread posts; Im a computer guy, I build my own and my fair share for other people as well, who is a total Noob to the whole home theater / audio world, but Im here to learn.
Thanks for your help. Just to be safe; HDMI straight to the receiver is the way to go and not toslink or analog cables?
I am looking for the best sound quality possible from my setup.

[renowilliams]

I play video to my plasma all the time from my computer to the tv. I use an hdmi,which I run direct to the tv and a toslink from my onboard sound to my reciever. I find this works great for me.

[kawizx9r]

To cover the sound thing,
if you send audio via HDMI you will be bypassing any processing/etc. done by your PC/GPU since the signal is strictly digital and is taken directly from the source IE dvd/bluray that's in your drive.

Doin this will leave your receiver to take care of the processing, so you will have no need for a sound card at all.

Whether or not it'll be really good quality will depend on the receiver/processor you send the signal to. Then you've got to consider the speakers and speaker cables used, as well as proper amplification. It's a long slippery slope :p

[inspiredsports]

I think we will be seeing a lot of this Chinese company, HA INFO, at http://www.ha-info.com

I just purchased a used HA Info NG27 which just has USB or 1/8" stereo mini in, and 1/8" mini stereo out, but the new NG98 and NG94MKII have more robust connection options.

Using the NG27, I have several 1/8 to RCA Y adapters and have been able to get great sound from my PC to preamp. The newer units with RCA and other connections should sound even better.

USB from your computer BYPASSES your sound card through the DAC so you don't have to put money into a sound card, and DAC chips are easily upgradeable in the future.

[kawizx9r]

I think we will be seeing a lot of this Chinese company, HA INFO at http://www.ha-info.com

I just purchased a used HA Info NG27 which just has USB or 1/8" stereo mini in, and 1/8" mini stereo out, but the new NG98 and NG94MKII have more robust connection options.

USB from your computer BYPASSES your sound card through the DAC so you don't have to put money into that, and DAC chips are easily upgradeable in the future.

External DAC is always nice, but he wants surround sound not just 2 channel.

Btw TOOdamn, we have the same monitor! I love it :)

[inspiredsports]

External DAC is always nice, but he wants surround sound not just 2 channel.

Btw TOOdamn, we have the same monitor! I love it :)

Oops, I missed the 7.2 part. The NG94 has optical, but not HDMI . . . yet.

[jawhog]

He's got an onkyo 808. The receiver is going to do a fine job. HDMI to receiver and don't look back. Just make sure the computer is sending a bitstream signal. Forget analog out from the computer. Depending on what's in there it may go toe to toe with the onkyo, but I really doubt it would best it.

[polktiger]

Oops, I missed the 7.2 part. The NG94 has optical, but not HDMI . . . yet.

I don't know that I would worry about trying to pass 7.2 content becuase I don't think anything (even the HD audio on Bluray disks) is 7.2. I think there is only 1 LFE channel. The .2 is done in the receiver, and many are merely like a Y splitter.

Unless your trying to pass HD content (meaning you have a Bluray player in your PC) I would stick with optical or digital coax to the AVR since they can pass the 6.1 or 5.1 content that is available on DVDs.

[TOOdamnFRANK]

thanks kawizx9r, that was exactly what i needed to know about the sound output. As for the monitor I love it as well, my only problem with it was that I ordered 3 of them and 2 each had a green stuck pixel on them, but i sent them back and the replacements have been fine. They work great for multi monitor setups bc of the relatively small bezel and i love the picture they put out once you fine tune them a little, they get bright as all hell if you turn up the brightness.

[TOOdamnFRANK]

I don't know that I would worry about trying to pass 7.2 content becuase I don't think anything (even the HD audio on Bluray disks) is 7.2. I think there is only 1 LFE channel. The .2 is done in the receiver, and many are merely like a Y splitter.

Unless your trying to pass HD content (meaning you have a Bluray player in your PC) I would stick with optical or digital coax to the AVR since they can pass the 6.1 or 5.1 content that is available on DVDs.

yes i am, sometimes, i have an LG 10x BluRay burner / player in my computer and Cyberlink DVD Power Player Ultra3d 10 software so i wanted to output at 7.1 from the computer to my receiver.

[TOOdamnFRANK]

I would like to send a huge thank you to everyone who replied. I am going to run the sound through an HDMI cable from my video card in to my receiver; thanks to the advice i received here. To be honest, I posted this question here and on my video card's forum and you guys answered my question more in depth and a lot faster than anyone over there on the computer side did. I still haven't got one reply in 2 days on that side, even when i emailed the manufacturer of my video cards to ask them what the sound output quality was for my model of GPU would be, which keep in mind I paid over $1500 for (2 in quadfire, effectivley 4 video cards running together as each one has two graphics processing unit(s) on its one board). You would think they would help someone who spends so much on such a simple part of their computer build, especially when I not only bought their top of the line, most expensive model, I bought two of them for my one main gaming computer. HAHA.
{+5 polk audio forum / home audio guys = -5 ati video card forum / computer guys}
You guys have been such a help on this forum. Every question I have asked on this forum so far has been answered promptly and, just as importantly, correctly. I wish there was some way to review a forum or give you guys props because as a total home audio noob I have learned more from my two forum posts here then I was able to by searching through numerous product manuals and google-ing my brain to mush. And to top it all off none of you made me feel like a moron for asking questions and trying to learn about my setup the way people did when I started getting into computers 10 years ago as a kid, and i still see happening on my other pc forums and hardware sites.

So once again, thank you, thank you, thank you, and thaaaaaank you.