Best way to connect pc to receiver

[sjps220]

Okay,

My motherboard has onboard sound. At home, I used to like to hook my receiver up to my pc through the optical out of the motherboard.

When I was at school without the receiver (using headphones), I was having a bit of trouble with the onboard sound. I was getting some feedback from closing and opening windows and even mouse movement. It was starting to bother me. So I got a creative audigy zs 2 card and some logitech speakers. Now everything works well at school.

My question is, what's the best way to attach my pc to my receiver at home? I can still go through optical but I have to swith the pcs sound output back to the onboard which is a bit of a pain. In terms of sound quality what's my best option? If I want to use the soundcard, what's the best way to attach it to the receiver? My receiver is a yamaha RX-V730 (http://www.yamaha.ca/av/Receivers/RXV730.jsp). It only has one digital coax input which is not being used because I use mostly optical. The card seems to have a digital output but it's a headphone style jack.

Oh and I am going for 5.1 surround sound.

Thank you for your help!

 

[Sean]

The best connection right now it optical in, then 3.5 rca adapter. May i ask you what branded speakers are you using with that reciever? And What do you mean switching cards for just analog output? You should be able to run both logitechs running off of 3.5mm jacks, and have output going to your reciever. S please restate your problem.

 

[sjps220]

The thing is that my soundcard doesn't have optical out. I'm wondering if it's better to use the built in motherboard optical out, or use the soundcards analog out, or try to use the digital coax out of the soundcard. The problem with the digital coax of the soundcard is that it's a headphone sized jack and I don't know how to deal with that.

The speakers are a random assortment of things I've thrown together. A lot of the parts are old since my setup is a work in progress. My center and sub are athena. The rest are older.

 

[oxeyereed]

sjps220: I've had to deal with exactly the same issue.

1) DO NOT use the optical onboard sound. While optical it self is a good connection the sound itsself is still processed by an inferior sound card. You will get much better sound with the audigy.

2)for 5.1 gaming you have to use the analog outputs (stereo mini to RCA cable LINK ) Quality is good over short cable lengths.

3) you can use the digital coax out which offers good quality sound (technically better than analog because it cant be affected by EMI/RFI but there will likely be no difference on the equipment you are using.) but you will only get 2 channels PCM signal. The digital coax will only have 5.1 sound from movies that will pass SPDIF to your receiver. So you will only get 5.1 from dobly digital or DTS audio tracks which are not found in games.

- if you decide to use the digital coax any coax cable will do, even one meant as a video cable. You will have use an adapter from radioshack to get it to fit in the stereo jack as that exact cable is hard to find but feel free to search.

- Personal I have both digital and analog connected and I find I use analog 90% of time. Your receiver may have better DACs than the Audigy so u may want to switch to digital spdif for movies or music.

 

[sjps220]

Thanks a lot for the help!

I think I will go analog. I just want to be able to set it up and forget it. Switching between soundcards is too much of a hassle especially if the sound is inferior through the motherboards optical.

 

[Sean]

Onboard analog should be OK, your mobo has good onboard.