Sound Cards and Consoles

Forever Zefiro

I have a somewhat weird setup, and I'm trying to figure out the best resolution to my problem.

I have a computer which has a monitor that is plugged in with DVI. The same monitor also has my PS3/360 plugged into it by HDMI, so depending on what I want to do, I just switch the input.

Now, for the computer, I have my surround sound speakers plugged into it with that standard cord with like 3 headphone type jacks. For the systems, since it's plugged into the monitor by HDMI, the sound just comes through the lame monitor speakers. There's no way to currently utilize my computer's speakers.

So, what I was mainly curious about is if I bought a sound card for the computer that has an optical input, can I then run an optical cord from that to the PS3, and then when I am playing a game, get the sound to come from the computer speakers?

Does this make sense? I feel like I should draw a diagram or something.

tsmvengy

Yes you should be able to do that.

Your motherboard doesn't have optical in?

Dark Shroud

All you would have to go into the PS3's settings and tell it to out put sound through the optical out port.

Forever Zefiro

Ok, so I installed a sound card on my PC that has optical on it. My surround sound speakers are connected to the sound card with those 3 headphone jack type plugs, and I have an optical cord connected from the sound card to the PS3. I have gone into the PS3 sound settings and set it to optical. I get no sound through my speakers for the PS3.

Thoughts?

mightyjongyo

Stupid question, but: is the PC on? Theoretically, if the optical port is an optical in and not an optical out, then what you have set up should work. Theoretically.

But, since it's a PC sound card, it might be the case that you have to do something with PC software to route the optical input to the speaker output, if that makes sense. If you can, another option is to plug in the standard a/v cable and have the ps3 output sound on that. You can buy a 2-prong audio to single prong converter and plug it into the speakers that way.

Forever Zefiro

mightyjongyo wrote: »

Stupid question, but: is the PC on? Theoretically, if the optical port is an optical in and not an optical out, then what you have set up should work. Theoretically.

But, since it's a PC sound card, it might be the case that you have to do something with PC software to route the optical input to the speaker output, if that makes sense. If you can, another option is to plug in the standard a/v cable and have the ps3 output sound on that. You can buy a 2-prong audio to single prong converter and plug it into the speakers that way.

Heh, yeah, the PC is on. The port though is optical out... So that won't work?

Not too familiar with this stuff, I figured an optical port was an optical port. Sigh, so a waste of time and money huh

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Forever Zefiro

What a pain in the ass. Well, I guess I better check on NewEgg's return policy on this sound card.

EDIT - Thanks by the way, mcdermott. I'll have to look into the suggestions you made.

Scrublet

mcdermott wrote: »

The problem is that, to my knowledge, neither Windows nor OSX are set up to automatically decode an incoming AC3/DTS stream (from the optical port) and output it over the ghetto-ass analog outs that are common on computers.* That's going to take...well, some kind of software to do, and I have no idea what kind that is. It's not something that many people do. For instance, when you play a DVD on your PC (another AC3/DTS source) that's being handled by your DVD player software.

This isn't like routing a microphone out to your speakers, where you just have an analog source being piped out through an analog out. Decoding AC3 requires some (relatively) sophisticated code, that (to my knowledge) is also proprietary.* Yes, there are open-source AC3 decoders (and probably encoders), but good luck finding one configured to do what you're trying to do. Maybe somebody here knows of one, which would be cool.

To top it all off what you're trying to do will almost certainly wind up introducing significant audio lag into your games.

My quick and dirty advice is to either pick up a 5.1 capable receiver and cheap 5.1 speakers (like, regular speakers not computer speakers) or pick up a set of 5.1 computer speakers that also feature optical in (then grab an optical switcher). Of course then the fun part will be figuring out whether your sound card supports outputting real-time (from games, not prerecorded media) 5.1 signals formatted in AC3/DTS (since a set of speakers with optical in probably won't have analog 5.1 in) which most don't. You'll want to look for a card featuring "Dolby Digital Live."

If I'm talking out of my ass, anybody can feel free to let me know.


* - Note that, as you are finding out, optical does not equal optical. I'm referring above to the 5.1 Dolby Digital (or DTS) streams commonly used in current-gen consoles (as well as DVDs). You can also output basic stereo PCM audio over optical, and Windows/OSX may be easily configurable to pipe that out over the speakers. But it'll just be in stereo, not surround. To my knowledge the Xbox 360 makes it easy to do this (configure for PCM out, not 5.1), no idea on the PS3. You'll probably still wind up with lag.

Some of this is true and some of this is false.

Most sound cards worth anything at all (and a lot of motherboards these days) can decode the DTS signal. It doesn't have to be the DVD software doing the decoding either...pretty much all the X-Fi sound cards can decode the signal, for example. Encoding surround sound from the computer for output over an optical cable is much less common...but you're not trying to do that. You should even be able to get the surround information from your 360.

All that being said, no an optical port is not an optical port. You will not be able to plug your 360 into an optical OUT on the sound card. That is only for putting the computer surround sound to an external receiver.

I feel pretty secure about saying that IF you buy a sound card with an optical IN, that is also advertising DTS/DD-5.1 decoding ability, you should be able to use the surround sound speakers through those 3 analog outputs as you described. I can't make any intelligent statements about audio lag that may result from this setup...I wouldn't bet on it for rhythm/fighting games.

Edit: one other comment specifically addressing mcdermott's last comment about putting stereo PCM over optical. I don't know if this true for all setups, but I've dealt with one example where this was being done...but it only ouputted the left and right channels! Meaning it took the information I was trying to tell it to send (all 5.1 channels), cherry picked the left and right channels, and dropped the rest. An example of what happened here is that I would be casting fireball in WOW, not hear myself casting, but hear some dude 45 degrees to the right fighting his own mob. Debugging that is where I learned all this information about computers and inputting/outputting sound. Such a mystery why people can't figure this stuff out (sarcasm); it took me a long time to confirm everything I wanted to learn about the subject, and I pay attention to this shit constantly. And FYI, HDMI is about to get a whole lot more complicated for people, though that's a different thread.

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Scrublet

mcdermott wrote: »

Yikes! The 360 at least is actually set up to do PCM output competently...I think you can even set it to do Dolby Pro Logic encoding to the stereo stream, but I'm not sure. But you can get workable stereo sound out of the optical port if for whatever reason 5.1 isn't what you want/need (in my case I currently don't have my 5.1 speakers set up in my living room, just my floorstanding fronts).

Yea it should be noted that at the time I really didn't have a solid understanding of either the codecs and their relation to various cables, much less how computers deal with these compared to receivers. Once I figured out what my problem was I got stuff working correctly, it just took forever. It's funny the various things companies try to throw at you to confuse you in this area too. For example...when the new PS3 came out even tech-oriented sites like Gizmodo were saying "oh look it can output Dolby-TrueHD and DTS-MA over HDMI instead of PCM" as if this was some big thing. If your receiver can handle THOSE codecs but can't handle raw sound that requires no effort you need a new receiver because they sound the exact fucking same.

Dark Shroud

Yeah the PS3 is really simple, set it to output LPCM and you can then output upto 7.1 over both the HDMI or optical. Only the new slim PS3 can output BitStream at 7.1 over the optical, this is do to a chip upgrade.

I am a Microsoft fanboy but Sony obviously has more experience with consoles and set top boxes.

HDMI 1.4 & HDBaseT are going to create a whole new set of problems. Personally I'm going with HDBaseT, at least for my PC. One cable to send audio, video, & power to the monitor.

Scrublet

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Yeah the PS3 is really simple, set it to output LPCM and you can then output upto 7.1 over both the HDMI or optical. Only the new slim PS3 can output BitStream at 7.1 over the optical, this is do to a chip upgrade.

Wrong. LPCM is raw, uncompressed sound. Thus it is by default the highest quality (though it is equal to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HDMA because those are compressed, but LOSSLESS). What's wrong in that statement though is that you cannot output 7.1 LPCM over optical. Optical can handle the following formats:

2-channel LPCM
5-channel lossy compressed (Dolby 5.1, DTS, etc)
6-channel lossy compressed (Dolby EX, DTS-ES)

You cannot send 7.1 LPCM over optical. You cannot send Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA over optical. The only way to get lossless sound is HDMI, whether you're using LPCM or Bitstream. The point of my comment was that with the PS3 Slim people were acting like the ability to do bitstream of TrueHD/HD-MA over HDMI was a big deal, when literally the only benefit is that the TrueHD or HD-MA light appears on your receiver display instead of LPCM. (Edit: unless of course your receiver supported Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD MA and NOT LPCM. Which I don't understand how that's possible but I have been shown before that those receivers exist).

General_Win

Depending on how attached your are to your computer speakers, I know that some speakers have optical in, and if you get fancy enough ones, you might be able to get HDMI.

I have a set of these: Sexy Speakers.

Daemonion

This is exactly the same setup I have, except I have a Creative sound card.

PC > Monitor via DVI.
360 > Monitor via HDMI
360 optical out* > PC soundcard optical in
Headphones/speakers > PC soundcard

*360 must be set to "Dolby Digital Stereo" under audio options for it to work for me*


I use a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro (what a silly name), but that is a little overkill for you unless you also use your PC to record music and what not. However, they have less expensive solutions that should still have an optical-in. Creative cards include software to manage input volume, sound effects, mixers, etc - if I don't have my S/PDIF input turn on, then I won't get sound from my XBox.

However, my monitor also has an audio output for S/PDIF, and my soundcard has an input for S/PDIF. So, if I wanted to (and if I am using HDMI from console>monitor, since HDMI sends video and audio), I could run an S/PDIF cable from my monitor to my soundcard to get 360 audio on my headphones. You may want to check your monitor to see if it has some type of audio out besides optical that you could plug in to your soundcard.

Hope this helps.