Will this work with my 7.1 amp?

Hi, I have a 7.1 setup with a pioneer amp and have my laptop connected to my whole set up via HDMI but its only video, it doesnt transfer audio and I want my laptop to give out 7.1 digital audio instead of having to buy a new HTPC.. so I saw this.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Labs...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272002826&sr=8-1

so far it's the cheaper/better solution I have seen but it says 5.1... would this work with my 7.1?

 

Should work, it all depends on how your 7.1 amp treats 5.1 inputs.

CL stuff is very, ah, dependent on having lots of CPU available as their recent products are mostly software emulation of what could and should be done in hardware.

They also cost at least 2x more than other, better, hardware-based external sound adapters.

Check this one out:

http://turtlebeach.com/products/microII/home.aspx

Also, www.newegg.com is a better place to comparison shop than Amazon.

 

Mmh, that looks just like I need.. almost too good to be true, let me check it out man, I think you just helped me out a bunch.

 

There are other products similar to the TBV dongles. I use the TBV products, a little research on your part will find the others.

 

Hey guys, I tried to find the dongle but no website that shipped to where I live so I eventualy bought the creative 5.1 usb dock thingie.. it sounds great on my system I have to say and I do get digital audio but I have a 7.1 system and the configuration software lets me go up to 5.1, how exactly do I know if I am geting 7.1 sound?

 

LOL, your system will tell you! That is, if it's so equipped. Save that, you can always listen to the other two speakers and see if you hear anything.

In all truth, your output will still be limited to the weakest link in you system. So if the limitation is a 5.1 module, that's all you'll get.

Even with that in mind, 5.1 is still the industry standard for surround sound, so don't think you're getting short changed. A well designed 5.1 sound track can sound phenominal. Not to mention, there are few true 7.1 produced movies anyway. So even if you had the 7.1 fully operational, you'd only have a handful of content to showcase it on.

Incidentally, an HDMI transfers both audio and video so I'm curious why you have audio as well. Is your laptop connected directly to the receiver?

 

Hi, yeah my system goes up to 7.1 and whenever I watch a blu-ray disc I watch that in my PS3 so it doesnt matter, the problem is several files I have on my PC but I doubt those are in 5.1 anyways and to be honest, the speakers sound great with this creative dongle, true, I am probably not geting 7.1 sound but I think I am hearing sound from every speaker so I dont know really..

As for the HDMI/Audio question, my laptop can send both video and audio through the HDMI but the audio is in really low quality, it really is intended for video only and it does show 1080p video on my tv but as far as audio went it only did stereo, whenever I played something with DTS sound it didnt work. I did some research on this problem and I found out a lot of people with my computer didn't even know the hdmi actualy supported audio, even some of the tech support people in alienware said it didnt support audio, and the sound card of my laptop was kind of generic.. it was a realtek high definition audio but the laptop had no toslink ports or anything like that so eventualy I got that creative 5.1 and connected it with an optical toslink cable to my pioneer amp and I have to say it's sounding great, bunch of files with DTS I had in my computer now sound awesome, I am just worried I am not geting the best out of my 7.1

 

Then you're doing something wrong; or there's a limitation somewhere else in your system. In fact, HDMI supports the highest quality audio available in a blu-ray dvd disc!

Put an asterisk on that site as uninformed.]

That's good to hear, but there is a test signal for 5.1 and 7.1. The next time you're ready to listen to that content, use it.