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Problem description: I'm having trouble with the surround sound system on my computer. Unfortunately I'm not sure how long it's not been working - I noticed some audio issues in Dark Souls a week or two ago, but didn't realise this was the cause until trying to watch videos in surround sound. The left and right speakers seem to be working fine, but the centre, subwoofer and rear two speakers aren't giving out any sound. I have an external decoder box with one cable which is plugged in to the line out jack on the motherboard. Using the "Test" function on the decoder box, all six speakers give out noise, but using test in Realtek HD Audio Manager or Device Manager only the left and right front speakers produce noise. Attempted fixes: I've played around with the cables to make sure everything is plugged in. I tried the decoder cable in the different jacks which didn't make any difference. I used the update driver option from Device Manager but apparently my drivers are up to date; I saw in one place someone suggested rolling back the drivers but that option was greyed out. I've tried altering the settings on the decoder box, but these do not seem to help. I note that on Realtek, the jack is assigned as "Front Speaker Out", but my only other options are headphones or line in. Recent changes: I upgraded to Windows 10 relatively recently. I'm confident that there were no problems with the audio before, but I can't say for sure whether I've had full surround sound since. -- Operating system:Windows 10 64-bit System specs: Motherboard: MSI Z97-G43 Intel LGA1150 Z97 ATX Motherboard (this one) Power Supply: Corsair CP-9020054-UK RM Series RM650 80 Plus Gold 650W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit (this one) Processor: Intel Core i5 4690K Processor (3.5 GHz, 6 MB Cache, LGA1150 Socket) (this one) The surround sound system itself I'm a little less sure on, I've had it for 7-8 years and it was a gift in the first place. The decoder is labelled VideoLogic and the remote RM-201, and the subwoofer is labelled Digitheatre. Location: United Kingdom I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes. Didn't have much luck on Google as I'm not sure how to describe the problem well enough to search it!
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Jan 24, 2016 18:09
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| # ? May 5, 2024 04:07 |
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Line out to the decoder box will only get you stereo. Typically you'd be running either a single digital cable to carry 5.1 surround sound, or three independent cables to carry the six total channels. If you play an audio source that is encoded with Dolby ProLogic (obsolete HiFi) it can decode a mono rear channel from the front stereo channels, but this is in no way similar to actual surround sound.
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Jan 24, 2016 21:02
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Even if it's not actual surround sound it'd be good to get any sound at all coming from the other four speakers. I've definitely had them working before, is this possible?
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Jan 29, 2016 00:55
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What other inputs does your decoder have? Can it support any other formats than Dolby ProLogic? Could you just hook the speakers up to your system directly?
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Jan 29, 2016 01:53
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Does your decoder have any other inputs such as toslink? Line out will give you stereo. If it can decode Dolby prolific you can get surround. What settings are available on the decoder?
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Feb 3, 2016 01:11
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I thought that rather than try and explain something I don't really understand, I'd take pictures. Decoder box:  I've got it set on Analogue Pro Logic at the moment. Digital doesn't produce any sound at all. Back:  Back of Subwoofer:  As you can probably see, the individual speakers can't be plugged directly into the computer unfortunately. Maybe I'm insane and I never had all the speakers working, but I'm certain I did with what I've got set up at the moment.
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Feb 3, 2016 18:28
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Can you take a picture of the back of the decoder box that shows the labels on the ports? If it has a digital input you should just be able to connect that to your computer for surround sound, but exactly how is going to depend on what input it has. I suspect you just need a TOSLINK-to-TRS adapter for the output from your computer, then to hook that cable up to the digital input of the decoder box, and possibly enable SP/DIF output (digital output) in your audio settings. You may also just be able to change a setting to send a digital signal Just for clarity, there are three ways to get surround sound to speakers: 1. Analog, run one stereo cable for each pair of speakers and center/sub (this is how computer speakers typically do it) 2. Digital LPCM, sending all of the decoded channels together over a single digital cable 3. Digital bitstreaming, sending the raw encoded surround audio data from a DVD or BluRay to a decoder box (used for home theater where you already have a surround source) For a computer set up digitally (rare) you'd usually do #2, since that enables you to play games and listen to audio in surround sound, rather than only getting surround sound from movies and other pre-mixed tracks as in #3. The exact details of how this work depends on what decoder box you're using and its capabilities. Most of the time you have a decoder box that supports all of the formats you might need. There's also the obsolete Dolby ProLogic, which was used to get sound out of rear speakers in systems that only had support for normal stereo. To oversimplify, it adds a special audio signal into both the left and right channels, and the differences between these signals are used to re-generate a rear channel in systems with Dolby ProLogic decoders, or just ignored in systems without them. This is how the original "Dolby Surround" worked before the invention of digital audio. While technically additional audio information is being added, this really has more similarities with virtual surround sound simulations than actual surround sound. Alereon fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 20:44
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Sure thing: Thanks for the help, I appreciate I'm pretty useless when it comes to describing the problem. e: the cables are going into input L and R at the moment.
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Feb 4, 2016 00:02
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Is it one of these? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Videologic-VID011-DigiTheatre-Silver/dp/B0000636TV
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Feb 4, 2016 01:23
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Use the port labeled "Optical" under the "S/PDIF" section. That's a TOSLINK port and you should have a matching output port on your motherboard (it probably has a dust-cover plug you need to remove). Optical cables are dirt cheap if you need one.
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Feb 4, 2016 01:53
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Alereon posted:Use the port labeled "Optical" under the "S/PDIF" section. That's a TOSLINK port and you should have a matching output port on your motherboard (it probably has a dust-cover plug you need to remove). Optical cables are dirt cheap if you need one. Unfortunately, according to the motherboard manual available at http://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/E7816v3.0.zip the motherboard has no way to output digital audio at all. There is no TOSLINK port and no indication that any of the analog ports would be switchable to digital mode. And since the decoder has not enough analog inputs for 5.1, I don't see any way true 5.1 surround sound would work with this setup.
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Feb 4, 2016 07:44
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Wow, my bad, I've never heard of a motherboard that didn't include digital output, since it's cheaper than analog to implement. So yeah, buy a soundcard, OP..
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Feb 4, 2016 16:28
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To be fair optical is being dropped from a lot of audio equipment as its extreamly limited in the formats it can handle. We are now in the realm if new 4k bluray players taking 2 hdmi cables to handle the bandwidth for video and audio.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:02
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Yeah, that board can do audio streaming over the HDMI output port, but HDMI->TOSLINK adapters are more expensive than a soundcard that would be more flexible anyway so that's a better solution.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:56
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Soundcard with optical is £10 on Amazon. Grab an optical cable at the same time and you should be good to go.
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Feb 5, 2016 00:40
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| # ? May 5, 2024 04:07 |
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Alright I'll give that a try, thanks for the help everyone.
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Feb 5, 2016 00:46
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