surround advice please

Soldato
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I'm thinking of ditching my current 2.1 pc setup and getting the Boston Acoustic soundware speakers and an accompanying Sony...DH820 AV receiver. As everything will be connected to my pc I'm wondering how to go about setting and connecting the above package up? My Samsung Led is used as a pc monitor and is hdmi'd into a nvidia 680. Sounds like a stupid question but I'm assuming I would need to buy a decent soundcard as well. Thanks.
 
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I know I'm sounding thick, so this won't effect the function of the pc? Excuse my ignorance as I have only ever used something like a logitech g51 (5.1) and this fed from my previous soundcard. What's been confusing me is that when I look at the connections tab on the Richer sounds website concerning the receiver, they always say no connection to pc?
 
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Thanks. I just need to read up on this a bit more. :)

I think the bit on the specs which suggest your can't connect your are deceiving.....there's always a connector to put the sound from your of through your amp. Most motherboards have an optical out now days.....connect that to your amp and job done. If that isn't possible, a 3.5mm output to phono input on the amp will also do it.
 
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I think the bit on the specs which suggest your can't connect your are deceiving.....there's always a connector to put the sound from your of through your amp. Most motherboards have an optical out now days.....connect that to your amp and job done. If that isn't possible, a 3.5mm output to phono input on the amp will also do it.

No need. His Nvidia GPU will output audio over HDMI, I have the same speakers and receiver as him with a GTX 580. Well, until my new Onkyo receiver arrives tomorrow :D
 
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No need. His Nvidia GPU will output audio over HDMI, I have the same speakers and receiver as him with a GTX 580. Well, until my new Onkyo receiver arrives tomorrow :D

This is totally correct, also true of recent ATI cards, just select the graphics card as the audio device in sound and jobs a good un.

Hawker
 
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I suggested it the way I did assuming that it was only audio which would be fed to the amp from the pc. I think an optical cable would be cheaper than hdmi especially just for audio. If the plan Is o feed audio and video to the amp, I would agree that hdmi would be better
 
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This is totally correct, also true of recent ATI cards, just select the graphics card as the audio device in sound and jobs a good un.

Hawker

i wouldnt say recent, every card from the hd2900 (and i believe the cheaper cards in the hd2xxx range) support hdmi-audio of some kind. the hd2900 was released what, 5 years ago? :p


I suggested it the way I did assuming that it was only audio which would be fed to the amp from the pc. I think an optical cable would be cheaper than hdmi especially just for audio. If the plan Is o feed audio and video to the amp, I would agree that hdmi would be better

If he can use hdmi audio, he'd be better off doing so. Opical doesnt give you the choice of using hd audio (uncompressed LPCM or TrueHd/DTS:MA) as it just doesnt suport them. There's little sense in limiting yourself to lossy compressed surround formats when hdmi audio is available.
 
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No need. His Nvidia GPU will output audio over HDMI, I have the same speakers and receiver as him with a GTX 580. Well, until my new Onkyo receiver arrives tomorrow :D

I would appreciate some advice regarding setup from PC to Sony STR-DH820 if you wouldn't mind? I'm sort of clueless as the last time I set one of these up there was no such thing as hdmi Lol. as previously indicated I have a GTX 680, which, at the moment is currently hdmi'd directly into my samsung on hdmi (1).

I note in the Receiver's guide there are instructions for a playstation but not pc. would I be correct in assuming I hdmi from the gtx680 to the game slot (hdmi in 2) and then hdmi from the TV out to the hdmi1 slot on my tv? thanks.
 
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did you set your graphics card as sound device?

I made the mistake thinking it was preset as I was using USB sound to begin with. It pays not to assume anything as I then went in to the Nviia control panel to Select high definition audio. One of the things I'm not too keen on is a momentary blank screen when the amp kicks in to A Standby. I found I also had to set the amp to passthrough to prevent my monitor from switching off completely.
 
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Soldato
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I made the mistake thinking it was preset as I was using USB sound to begin with. It pays not to assume anything as I then went in to the Nviia control panel to Select high definition audio. One of the things I'm not too keen on is a momentary blank screen when the amp kicks in to A Standby. I found I also had to set the amp to passthrough to prevent my monitor from switching off completely.

Glad you've got it sorted :)
 
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I just tried updating the gpu drivers as windows 7 has a habit of loosing the hdmi sound settings after the amp settles into A. Standby mode. It's annoying having to reboot all the time to get windows 7 to detect the hdmi sound settings. Yet to ascertain as to whether this has sorted the problem though.

Edit: Unfortunately this made no difference. I believe however, that I can simply right click on the speaker icon on the task bar and re-enable from there without having to reboot.
 
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