W3J - Gaming in 5.1

Has anyone tried hooking up a 5.1 surround sound system using a mini-toslink connection to their laptop's onboard sound and then using it to play games? Did everything work fine?

I recall reading somewhere that while the S/PDIF outputs on the W3J and/or other laptops may support 5.1 sound for movies and such, it may not do so for games.

 

i can't even get spdif out on my w7j to work.

 

Bump. Is there nobody that has tried to hook up the W3J to a 5.1 system?

 

Bump.

I am currently using a mini to RCA cable to connect my laptop to my surround system, but all that does is split the audio into 2 channels instead of a true 5.1

My guess is we would need some kind of S/PDIF to Toslink cable, don't know if that exists or if a converter is needed, anyone?

 

Yup, I've done it. What you need is a toslink to mini-plug adapter .. Something like this. Works like a charm on my W3J

EDIT: Pretty good price here.

Cheers.

 

The other important thing is that you need to turn on the correct selection in the audio properties as well...

 

Mr Pigeon, thanks for the info and the link!

Justin, do you mean switching the speaker setting to 5.1 in the advanced audio properties?

 

I believe you will only get 2 channels in games but when watching movies that send Dolby Digital or other digital signals, you can get 5.1 if your speaker receiver has a hardware decoder. On my desktop I can only get 2 channels for games until I replaced it with a Dolby Digital Live! soundcard which converts all signals coming out of my computer into a digital signal, letting my Logitech Z5500 receiver do all the decoding into 5.1.

 

If the game supports 5.1, you'll get a 5.1 output only if you use a compatible receiver. Like Justin said, you'll also need to set the proper configuration in SoundMax or else the card will try to decode the 5.1, which it cannot do.

When setup properly, the digital signal is sent via "S/PDIF Passthrough" directly to your DD 5.1-enabled receiver, which will decode the DD signal to your home theater speakers or Z5500s or what have you ..

Cheers.

 

Correct..... and I beleive (it's been a while since i turned mine on), but even after that, you need to turn the FiberOptic out on..... when it's on, you can see a red light emitting from the headphone jack... that tells you it's ready for the miniTOS (fiberoptic) cable........

You only use that when, as said above, you're outputting to a digital reciever (like your home stereo)...

The W2 is the only unit with built in Dolby decoding ON BOARD - what's grea about this is that your front channels run through the headphone jack.... your center channel runs through your mic jack and your rears run through your lineout..... I use that for my 5.1 klipsch pro media speakers and it's awesome.....

If you 5.1's with an outboard decoder - you juat need the s/pdif passthrough to pass the digital output right into the decoder which then seperates the channels.

 

The W3j supports fiber optic? O.O;;

 

The only Asus notebooks ever with a full size TOS fiber cable out were the L5 series..... Since, they've gone with miniTOS, which is a miniRCA jack which supports regular headphones as well as miniTOS optical - where the jack is used simply as a passthrough.

I'd have to go and take a quick look, but I'm fairly certain as of today, at least all of the Core 2 Duo Ensembles use the same audio interface or better....

The simple answer would have been - yes the W3 can support miniTOS - which is fiber...... typically as mentioned before, there are TOS to minTOS cables which are what I use to connect to my home stereo.... and TOS is the regular fiber optic cable most people would think of when thinking about this.

 

Im a bit late to the party but ..

How does one enable the SPDIF out on the W3J? i baught a mini optical (toslink) to regular optical cable i need i just dont know how to enable it on my W3J, any help appreciated!

 

My notebook is Z96Js (S96J). I don't see any SPDIF control in Windows Master Volume control panel and also in Realtek HD audio manager.
How to enable SPDIF output in my software?

 

The problem is that GAMES dont output Dolby/DTS encoded surround sound. (except for Warcraft 3, where the environmental music was surround). they use 6 discreet channel WDM sound. The optical connector will not output 6 discreet channels. Only if you somehow encoded it with a realtime 6 channel WDM -> Dolby 5.1 encoder (which doesn't exist to my knowledge) would you get surround in games from the optical jack.

the optical jack will be fine for surround movies, if you have a reciever to decode it.

The one audio chipset which did encode dolby was the NVIDIA designed Nforce sound chip, whose name escapes me.

I wish it was different, believe me. if anyone knows otherwise, please enlighten me.

 

right, but how do you ENABLE it in the first place? im not concerned about functionality anymore i understand that, i wish to know hot to ENABLE my the **** thing lol

 

I just plugged a fiber cable in and it was already activated - no options needed to be selected. My only question is how to activate the pass-through. I can't find the option anywhere.

~ Brett

 

For example use FFDSHOW, and in the audio (FFDSHOW audio) section for AC3 and DTS choose SPDIF, but you can also get 5.1 from stereo source, here is how to do that.

Go to OUTPUT
select AC3 and 640 bitrate
Then go to MIXER and use 3/2 matrix, but to be on the safe side you can customize it and set 1 on the diagonal (for the case when you play AAC 5.1). Plus you can adjust it to your liking.

I also recommend using Resample to 48k with libavcodec highest quality

 

Here are a few things to clariy some misunderstanding:

1) Not everything on your computer is in Dolby Digital (5.1) so as a result, not everything you play on your computer will be relayed to your receiver as a Dolby Digital signal. This includes many games, 99.9% of all music, and many old movies.
2) If you have an older receiver, your receiver won't be able to recognize the digital output sent to it if the source is not Dolby Digital (or if your computer is not set properly).
3) There are hundreds upon hundreds of digital audio formats, even in Dolby Digital itself (e.g. 5.1 DD vs 7.1 DD EX). If your receiver doesn't have the proper decoder, it won't be able to play certain digital audio and some games and non-standard movies will have funky digital audio.

For the W3, ProPortable mentioned above the use of 5.1 without having to use a receiver.

But if you have a receiver, and you want digital audio, heed the rules above.

 

Ok my G1 has the toslink, and i have a cable that goes from toslink to regular optical (like the converter u linked) but i dont have anything to plug it into, is there some 5.1 speakers that have an optical input? cuz that's what i really need

or is there an external solution that can go from optical to 3 (1/8)miniplugs? cuz i got logtech 5.1 speakers

 

Soundstorm! And yeah I think you're basically right. I use an external sound card, it's actually more convenient than 3 coaxial plugs on a laptop since you just plug one thing in, get higher sound quality, and don't have to deal with all of this complicated stuff