How to connect hifi speakers to my PC?

[steve_1979 0]

Hello, I use my computer for watching TV and listening to music as well as FSX and would like to use some good quality hifi equipment for the sound. I've seen a Yamaha RXV365BL 5.1 receiver for

[Kosta 122]

Since the Yamaha has the "Optical Digital Input: Yes", of course.The whole things seems like a very good budget setup.Yamaha will probably have some virtual surround modes that will work well with FSX, if not even real surround from FSX (I believe it supports it, not sure if over optical though).

[steve_1979 0]

Thanks for your advice. I'll give the optical S/PDIF a go first which will work ok with music and films. If neccessary I can still use the 3.5mm sockets as well to get proper surround sound in FSX and other games.

[Kosta 122]

You won't get proper surround over 3,5mm sockets with that Yamaha. Receivers like these can only accept (or decode) digital signal if received digitally (optical or coaxial, both are S/PDIF standards), and over sockets you can only give it stereo signal, which it can use to virtually make a surround (split the sound to other speakers).I would strongly advise you to use only the optical I/O.I have two soundcards, and I use 3 outputs to my receiver, where two go over the mixer - one with 3,5mm, one over gold chinch and one coaxial s/pdif. Why I'm not using digital only is simple - my mixer doesn't support digital i/o, so I am limited to analog here, but I at least have one digital to my receiver if I need it. I couldn't care less for surround in FSX though...

[BartEnder 2]

Consider Asus Xonar sound card. They are expensive, yes - but with good quality amplifier + speakers, You won't regret.

[steve_1979 0]

I will try it with just the Optical S/PDIF first to see how it works but my motherboards onboard sound doesn't support Dolby Digital live encoding so I'm not sure if it will be able to provide proper 5.1 surround. If this is the case then I will need to buy a good sound card such as the Asus Xonar or Creative X-Fi at some point in the future.The reason I mentioned using three of the 3.5mm audio out sockets is because I play a lot of other games as well as FSX which use 5.1 surround sound. Doing it this will still effectively use the Yamaha as a simple 5 channel analog amplifier while my PC does all the sound processing. I know that this won't give the best quality sound possible but it will do as a temporary measure while I save up for a new sound card.

[Kosta 122]

For FSX, you would need the encoding, but as I said - never hear of it work. Maybe someone else could confirm.

[steve_1979 0]

I already have FSX and other games working fine in 5.1 surround sound using the 3.5mm sockets and my current Logitech G51 speakers so I know that method definitely works ok.I've orded the Yamaha reciever and Q Acustic speakers this morning so I'll find out soon if I can connect it up just by using a S/PDIF cable. My motherboard has 'DTS Surround Sensation 5.1' and the Yamaha reciever has a DTS decoder so it may work.