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    It's official: It worked. - How to hook up a laptop to 5.1 -

    Discussion in 'Accessories' started by M1CH43L, Nov 4, 2006.

  1. M1CH43L

    M1CH43L Notebook Geek

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    Well, to conclude my little sound project, it worked! I just connected it up, and it was outputting 5.1 in a jiffy, so glorious! The mp3's and everything worked! The movies I used SPDIF for AC3 and DTS, and it was awesome. Tested it with the thx optimizer and truly had sound coming out of each channel. We played a movie with some friends in my dorm, and it sounded great. We we're looking up music and trailers, all testing it and playing them, such as Europe: Final Countdown, halo 3 trailer, and weird al's white and nerdy. It worked with everything. Success! What I did, remember, was to hook up a composite video adapter to the back of the laptop on the tv-out, hooked up a digital coax into the composite video adapter into a coax to optical converter, connected a optical cable into the converter, and then into the optical digital in on the back. Went into the ffdshow audio codec and selected spdif for AC3 and dts. Put the dvd in, selected "digital in" on the receiver, and presto, theater sounding audio from my laptop. Amazing.

    If you want to see my journey and how I got to where I am today, here are my previous threads concerning this topic.
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=85760
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=83389
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=79730
     
    M1CH43L, Nov 4, 2006
    #1
  2. khanak

    khanak Notebook Guru

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    how bout some pics......
     
    khanak, Nov 4, 2006
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  3. ikovac

    ikovac Cooler and faster... NBR Reviewer

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    Great Michael!

    I might try that someday with a digital SPDIF connector on my notebook.

    Ivan
     
    ikovac, Nov 5, 2006
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  4. Cam_86

    Cam_86 Notebook Evangelist

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    er.... why didnt you just get a external optical out USB sound card? You know Turtle beach makes one for under 50$. That way, you get PURE digital, better sound(less EMI) a smaller set up, and pay a LOT less...
     
    Cam_86, Nov 5, 2006
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  5. M1CH43L

    M1CH43L Notebook Geek

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    Actually, I paid less than $50, and I'm sure that my straight thru connection is much faster than a usb one, where it isn''t boggled down by software translation. And also, my digital pass through is as pure as it gets, since it is all in spdif, it's just an encoded package, however, you may have got me on the EI, but, it never shows up in movies or anything.
     
    M1CH43L, Nov 6, 2006
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  6. ethan592

    ethan592 Notebook Enthusiast

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    does it work for games? i was under the impression that you would only get true digital thru the svideo from dvd's. And movie trailers online arent the best way to test because i doubt they have 5.1 encoding due to download size.
     
    ethan592, Nov 7, 2006
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  7. Phillip

    Phillip Phillip J. Fry

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    could you perhaps provide a list of all the components that you used to achieve this technologic marvel?
     
    Phillip, Nov 10, 2006
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