Posted by sir_winston@usa.net on 1, 2000 at 11:15 AM:
In Reply to: Speaker advice needed please posted by saint on 21, 2000 at 5:32 PM:
I have the Live!Value too. It's a good all-purpose card, and you don't really need the 5.1 at all. What you want depends on which kind of sound system you're looking for: do you want the best economy solution, or the best solution at a decent-enough price?
If you want economy, go with any good 4.1 system designed for the PC. I have the Cambridge SoundWorks 4.1, and it produces a fairly clean sound--some static, but it's unnoticeable unless you turn the volume way down and hold the speaker close to your ear. My guess is that the static comes from the thin, barely-shielded wiring these speakers use--I guess this because, if you turn the volume down very low and put the speaker to your ear, you can sometimes hear an almost-inaudible radio broadcast that the wires are intercepting. Shielding them should produce a much cleaner signal, but I have not bothered to do so since it's not noticeable at normal volumes anyway. They have a good range of sound, a very decent volume that can fill a medium-sized room without turning the volume knob up too far, and are available at a great price of only $69.95 at most places like Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. I bought mine for only $39.95, but that was an unusually low sale price. 4.1 means 4 speakers and a subwoofer.
If however you want the best solution at a decent price, but certainly not an economy price, then go with a *real* set of speakers. Forget about crappy computer speakers, the best of which only put out about 10-20 watts RMS each. Get a *real* surround sound speaker system, which you can hook up your PC and any other sound source to. You can usually find them for sale at decent prices at Best Buy type stores. Either buy the "surround sound receiver" and the speaker set separately, or buy them as a package. At a minimum, buy a receiver with Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding, which is what most DVDs use. If you can spring for a few dollars more, get a receiver with DTS decoding as well--many better-quality DVDs use DTS as an option; DTS has better sound than Dolby Digital 5.1, the reason being that DTS has a larger bitrate and captures a better range of sound--usually you get better bass and high-pitched sound with DTS. But most DVDs use Dolby Digital 5.1, or Dolby 2,0, so DTS is an option you don't necessarily need. Just avoid any receivers which do *not* have at least Dolby Digital decoding--they are usually misleadingly labelled "Dolby Digital-Ready"--"ready" meaning you still would ned another decoder. If it says "Dolby Digital" without the "ready" part, it's what you're looking for. These receivers have inputs for sound sources, get one that has enough inputs for all the sources you'll be using--like, your computer, your VCR, your stereo, whatever. There are also different input types, which can get confusing, but you can figure that part out from the specs/box of the receiver and what you know about your own equipment you're going to hook up. The purpose of this receiver is to decode the digital sound from your DVDs to a real digital 5.1 format, instead of the down-scaled sound a computer software DVD player like PowerDVD or WinDVD uses when it sends sound to your regular 4.0 or 2.0 soundcard. It also amplifies this sound and sound from any other source, like your VCR or stereo or Quake3 game. Then it passes the sound on to the 5.1 speaker set.
Which brings us to the speakers. You'll need 5 speakers and a subwoofer to attach to your Dolby Digital Receiver. Any good speakers will do, but usually people buy special speaker sets. Whatever store sells you your receiver will doubtless have such a set available. But, like I said, you can usually find a very good deal on a packaged system that comes with the receiver *and* the speakers and subwoofer. For example, this week's Best Buy advert has listed a decent Panasonic Dolby Digital home theater system with receiver, 5 speakers, subwoofer, and remote, for $499.
Now, compare what you get for about $70 to what you get for about $500. The $70 set of 4.1 speakers will put out about 40 or 50 watts combined, including all the speakers and subwoofer. It will fill a middle-sized room well enough, but not be ver impressive. It will let you get 4 channel scaled-down pseudo-surround sound when playing DVDs, but nothing like the the *real* Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, much less DTS. It's very adequate, but not special.
Meanwhile, the $500 Dolby Digital home theater system will get you 600 watts combined power (varies, but the example I used from the Best Buy catalog has this power), which can fill even a large room with sound, even at very loud levels. It will decode your Dolby 5.1 DVDs the way they were meant to be decoded, with a much more accurate, clean sound, with *real* surround sound effects that the Live! and a 4.1 speaker system only try to emulate, but not very well, and a much more powerful and clean bass since the Live! mixes the bass into the four channels and then the speakers split it back into the subwoofer. You will be able to hook up many different sound sources into the receiver, and have them all come out of your well-placed 5.1 speaker setup.
So, there it is, budget vs. performance. Also, for the Dolby Digital receiver to get your digital signal when playing DVDs, the Live!Value isn't adequate by itself. The regular Live! has what's called an sp/dif connector, a digital connector for hooking up to components like a receiver. But, the Live!Value doesn't have an sp/dif. Its regular stereo jacks are perfectly good for outputting any other sound to the reveiver, like playing music, etc., but the DVD's digital sound stream really isn't sound, it's encoded data which the receiver needs to get digitally to be decoded. You can fix this though by one of two ways: you can get a "daughtercard" which attaches to special connectors on the Live!Value card and has an sp/dif output--a review of such daughtercards and a link to their manufacturer is at http://www.rageunderground.com/articles/adp.shtml ; or, you can get a hardware DVD decoding card, which will have such a connector, from a vendor listed at http://www.pricewatch.com/1/303/2646-1.htm --and it will have the advantage of decoding your DVD movies in hardware, instead of software, for higher picture quality and less CPU usage. I would recommend the DVD decoder card--I have the Sigma Designs RealMagic Hollywood+, and it gives a better picture than any DVD decoding software, and has an sp/dif connector I use to connect the sound to my home theater system. Playing DVDs, it only has 5% CPU utilization, so I can do other things while watching movies. Best of all, it has its own built-in video connector for attaching it to a TV, so I can watch the movie either on the PC screen, or on the TV, without needing to use my video card's TV-out and the quality loss associated. You can get a RealMagic Hollywood+ these days for about $50, a great deal.
In case you haven't visualized it yet, here is my setup: I have a PC with an SB Live!Value connected to a Cambridge SoundWorks 4.1, which is arranged around my desk and just behind my chair at the perfect positions for gaming, so that when sitting at my computer I'm in the middle. Then, my PC's Hollywood+ hardware DVD decoder card has its sp/dif digital audio connector connected to a real Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS home theater system with the speakers arranged around the room perfectly for watching movies, with the couch at the center of the speakers. If you want no compromises, it's the best way to go.
A word about the new Live!5.1 cards: they're useless compared to a real dolby digital receiver. They output in 5.1 channel analog format, which creates problems for expandability and networking your audio components together, unless you use the Cambridge Soundworks Digital 5.1 system which has a proprietary digital interface to the Live!5.1--and this is just a glorified set of computer speakers, nothing like a real home theater system. It's not good for DVDs unless you're in a small room, and no better than the Cambridge SoundWorks 4.1 for music and the like. And, it offers very little expandability, not enough audio connections. So, the Live!5.1 is a nice choice if you need to buy a new sound card, or if you absolutely cannot afford or save up for a real dolby digital home theater system, but it's not a good reason to upgrade.