5.1 Surround sound for PC

[magmaster35]

Hi

Please can anyone help? i currently have a Sony Vaio, RS704 Desktop pc. Connected to it is a Trust Soundwave 2000p 5.1 surround sound speaker system which was given to me free. So i felt obliged to set it up. Having spent some time with it i realise it is real budget rubbish, it is at best ok with movies, albeit i cant get the rear speakers to work properly, but with music things get worse. The sound is thin and lacking in clarity and dynamics, and has no real base weight. What i need is a set up that gives me good sound with movies and better near hi-fi sound with music. Does such a thing exist? Any suggestions would be most welcome. I fully understand that it can't be as good as true hi-fi, but surely there is something out there that can give me much better and convincing sound than this.

 

[professorhat]

Reading the review on the Trust Soundwave, it looks like it requires a soundcard which is capable of outputting the 5.1 signal - it doesn't look like the Sony comes with this as default so have you upgraded to one? If not, this probably explains the lack of any rears.

In terms of upgrading it, are you looking to get a proper 5.1 surround system for the movies or is music more important i.e. just a stereo system for both would work? Also what's your budget?

 

[magmaster35]

Hi Thanks for the reply, very helpful, in answer to your questions, i mainly want it for quality music reproduction, i will from time to time watch movies on it but i use my main system for that normally. I havent upgraded the soundcard so it makes sense what you say, i naively thought the processing would be done via the Trust, apparently not. My budget if i can help it would not go over £200 to £250. Thanks again for your reply.

 

[professorhat]

Okay, in which case I would recommend just going with a standard stereo setup. A lot is going to depend on the soundcard in your existing desktop - I can't find out any details on it unfortunately. If it's a decent one though, you can just output from this direct into whichever setup you like. There's a few options for this setup - you could go for a traditional amplifier and speakers setup - there's a plethora of options here in your budget, most likely in the Cambridge Audio or NAD range for the amp and something like the Tannoy F1s, Q Acoustc 1010is or the original Wharedale Diamond 9.1s for the speakers (all of which can be found cheaper than the price listed in the review). I can't really make any recommendations here as I'm not really familiar with these systems, but someone else can hopefully help. Another option would be to use powered speakers like the Audioengine A5s - these don't require the separate amplifier and are therefore a bit of a neater solution.

If your soundcard isn't up to scratch though, you'll want to remove this from the process of getting the music out of the PC into the above system. There's two ways I can think of for doing this. One is to get a USB external soundcard - this removes the soundcard from the inside of the PC (which is normally quite "noisy" and therefore likely to introduce interference). M-Audio and Edirol are good places to start in looking for one of these. I would suggest looking for one which has both analogue and digital outputs (preferably optical). This then gves you the option at a later point to also add an external DAC which would further improve the sound. (more details on all of this can be found in this thread).

Another option which works if you're an iTunes user is to buy an Airport Express unit. This allows you to stream your music wirelessly to the AE unit which is then connected into the above system, again removing the soundcard from the process and thus improving the sound. If you're not an iTunes user though, I would recommend going for the external soundcard instead.

 

[magmaster35]

Thanks, once again very helpful i will check these out. Just one thing though, i would not of thought of a traditional amp and speaker set up for the simple reason of connectivity. Is it possible and easy to connect a traditional seperate amp and speakers to the PC, are the connections all there, or would i need to buy special leads?

 

[professorhat]

Well, likely your own soundcard will have one of two analogue outputs - either a 3.5mm output, in which case you need a standard 3.5mm to RCA phono cable like this one

Or it'll have standard RCA phono outputs, which means a standard RCA phono cable can be used like this one

Certainly if you go for the external soundcard option, this will have one of these connections on it.

You can get better quality versions of these cables, see the Audio interconnects reviews on this site for some examples.

 

[magmaster35]

Thank You for all your help. Much appreciated.