Calling all audiophiles...

[Zeal]

I recently purchased a Onkyo HT-S5100 7.1 surround sound system ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6882120081 ), and I am trying to hook it up to my computer using a Realtek onboard audio ( http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/m ... -us0000172 ). Yes I know onboard audio usually sucks, but I never noticed any problems when I was using my old 4 pt speakers.

So anyway, I saw the onboard audio had a optical spidf so I assumed that one cable would carry ALL channels (front, side, and rear). I think that was my first mistake? After playing around with it for a few hours it seems like these optical cables only cary one channel (front). I dont care much about 'dolby movie surround', but I DO care about being able to control the volume of the front/side/rear independently, and I want to have some nice surround sound effects for games. Do I need to ditch the optical cable and run a bunch of rca cables instead? The Onkyo reciever does have plenty of rca inputs...

And one last question - I am noticing static and popping in lower quality audio streams (especially on youtube clips). I plugged my old speakers in and I think I can hear the same static, I just never noticed it before. Do you think if I upgraded my sound card it would help with this static/popping? Sound quality on cds and high bitrate mp3s is PERFECT, I only notice this problem on certain lower quality streams.

Thanks for any advice!

[jjp]

Noise distance is usually worse for onboard sound than it is for dedicated sound cards. So yes, adding a sound card should help with your static noise problem.

[Kojack]

What are you calling all audiophiles? I can think of a few words if you run out.


Things like static can be especially annoying on front audio ports, since the cable has to go through the case past hard drives, fans, all kinds of fun electrical stuff.

[volca]

And one last question - I am noticing static and popping in lower quality audio streams (especially on youtube clips). I plugged my old speakers in and I think I can hear the same static, I just never noticed it before. Do you think if I upgraded my sound card it would help with this static/popping? Sound quality on cds and high bitrate mp3s is PERFECT, I only notice this problem on certain lower quality streams.

Thanks for any advice!

I don't know about the other problems you have, but this happened to me in a similar way with headphones - I'm a proud owner of Koss Porta Pro Jr. for about 10 years now. I used some lower quality headphones before and I didn't hear half of the sound from any source (other than a bad recording on a tape) - best mention is CD's of classical music for example - I then heard all the tiny details in the background.
Long story short - this can be normal! The recording might contain such static. If it is low quality (-> compressed) recording, the sound you hear is (are) artifacts and compression hiss most probably. The better quality the speakers/headphones are, the better you hear all the details (and problems) of the recording.

Edit: Oh, and S/PDIF seems to transfer all the channels according to wikipedia(?) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDIF#Prot ... ifications

[mysterycoder]

I believe SPDIF can carry either 2 channel pcm or multi-channel compressed sound. To be able to use SPDIF with something that outputs PCM on all channels, you would need a soundcard that does on the fly encoding of Dolby Digital or DTS.