Originally posted by §ôµÏG®ïñD
depends..
If the Logitech Z-680s speakers have a (AC3) Dolby Digital decoder, You won\'t get 5.1 sound in general use.
Only in DVD movies and games that carry a AC3 signal will you get surround. You\'ll need a Coaxial or Optical cable for this. Depending on what type of SPDIF port you have.. If the sound chipset decodes AC3, you\'ll wanna disable it and allow it to pass through to the receiver.
You can use analog cables if the sound chipset can decode AC3 on the fly and send it to your speakers. But thats only if your speakers have the analog inputs needed (Front Left, Right - Rear Left, Right - Center, Sub) etc.
You need Nforce2 Chipset that carrys MCP-T technology. Which encodes all PCM signals into AC3 and sends it via spdif to the receiver for gaming.. Only thing that has this are Nforce2 motherboards. I\'ve yet to see a soundcard on the market that encodes into Dolby Digital in realtime.
The speakers came with an external decoder that can decode DD5.1 (AC3), DTS and PLII. It has inputs for analogue (3 cables), optical and coax.
It came with the standard 3 cord analogue cables. The problem is that the sound card on my lap top only has 1 output (the S/PDIF) so I can only connect one analogue cord to it, and thus I only get 2.1 sound.
But it does have a S/PDIF out which I think can be used to output a DD5.1 signal to an external decoder with a coax input. Only problem is that I have no idea what kind of cable that requires...
Yeah I know I\'ll only be getting 5.1 in movies and games that has AC3 sound but that\'s quite alright. It\'s better than never experiencing anything other than 2.1 sound when you\'ve got a 5.1 set-up!
Here are some links I\'ve found on the subject:
At the bottom of the page there\'s an explanation of Toshlink and Coax.
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/audio_toslink_adapters.html#co2 Here\'s a review of an older Toshiba model (5200-701) with the same sound card as my newer 5200-903:
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/notebooks/0,39023980,10002285,00.htmIt says here:
"The serial, parallel and PS/2 ports have gone, and in their stead you get three USB connectors, FireWire, a VGA output and a choice of analogue or S/PDIF digital audio, which will come in handy if you have a 5.1 speaker set and want digital surround effects from DVD film soundtracks.
Audio processing is handled by a Yamaha AC-XG chip, and the sound quality from the integrated stereo speakers was unusually good."
So I now know that 5.1 should be possible just not how to do it
Here\'s a cable I think might do the trick:
http://www.8thstreet.com/Product.asp?ProductCode=7792&Category=StudioIf anyone knows if this is what I need, please feel free to help!
