Be Excellent To Each Other

"Were you asking for a dramatic, exciting voice?"

Just a text will do.

It just sounds awesome from way up there.

Result. That sounds like a bargain but don't blame me if it's shit or broken.

It's going to cost the seller more than £12 to post it as well, but that's not your problem

Turns out that my TV can only output stereo from its optical socket. Annoying, but not life changing so back to square one.

Told ya:

Strange as my TV has a surround sound copyright/trademark notice on the back too. I don't have the instructions but it doesn't seem like there's anything special I've got to do to get it to work.

That means it can decode those formats for playback, e.g. if you hook a DVD player up over optical with no other devices, the TV has to decode the surround sound signal, downmix to 2.0, and output over its own speakers.

Ah right, well that makes sense then. Never mind. I'm back to where I started then by plugging my 360 straight into my surround sound.

Although, it'll have to move when I get my Xbox one unless I can get a splitter of some description.

Splitters? What you need is a selector.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cable-Mountain- ... cal+switch

...for example

Only if you like having an extra step each time you want to change channel. A splitter working backwards won't have that (although it doesn't always work for optical stuff - you can only have one input powered up at a time).

That's a very ugly splitter.

Years ago I wanted to buy a 5.1 thing for my TV. So I bought the logitech z506. Except I knew nothing about 5.1 stuff and didn't bother to check the back of my TV and just assumed it had the red/black/orange/green/pink connectors like my PC sound card does. So instead I had to use the Stereo headphone socket on my TV as input to speakers, which kind of sucked as the amplifier liked to invent random sounds in the rear channels. But it still sounded better than my TV's terrible speakers.

Then a few months back the amplifier died and just emitted fart sounds out of the speakers. Shopping around for a new one I was now smart enough (tm) to check the TV's manual and find out that it only does surround via the lame optical cable, and there's a million 5.1 and home theatre systems to choose from. I couldn't be arsed picking between them so I bought this LG LHB745 as it has yellow bits and didn't sound shit in currys.

It works pretty well, sounds pretty good (though I'm not convinced 5.1 stuff is really 5.1ing. I've yet to have any helicopters circling my sofa, but those individual speaker test things works). so consider this a recommendation. The bluetoothing is a bit insecure and has the potential to be really annoying (i.e. I think the neighbours once tried connecting to it and it interrupted my fucking DVD. Who designs these things?).

It also has 2 input HDMI sockets. I lied up there^^ as I did do a tiny bit of shopping around and comparison between things. i.e. I checked my TV manual and it claims it only forwards stereo that it gets in via HDMI, but does output 5.1 from the TV broadcasts. So I got this LG system because I can plug consoles etc into it and hopefully get 5.1 from them. I've yet to bother doing that.

Yeah it is. Terrible reviews, too.

But y'know, do your own research, slacker.

AV amp recieved, installed and listened to. Wasn't actually broken when it arrived but the guy had obviously whipped the cables out the back a bit viciously and broken the central peg for the sub out in the hole. No biggy really just a bit eyeroll, that's eBay for you, eh? Sounds amaze though so thanks for the advise and everything everyone. Only down side is its another layer of complexity for switching on the telly that Mrs. W will have to learn and she only just got used to switching on the ps4!

Glad you've got it all working and that it sounds good.

I can't do without surround sound now.

Get yourself a nice programmable remote.
I have a Logitech where you define various activities like "watch tv" or "PlayStation" and it will turn on everything, set inputs correctly and so on.

Makes life much easier.

I'm selling one!

Haven't you been selling it for ages or is it a different one?

Ages. I'm not trying very hard.

Is it cheap? I just handed in my notice at work so everything must now be cheap.

Yeah. £60 should do it.

Is it good? Y u sellit?

SIXTY QUID FOR A TELLY REMOTE!?

People be crazy.

Heh. I paid... rather more for mine. Totally worth it, too.

Come on then, how much more and give us a link to what the hell it is? Genuinely interested to see what these telly remotes do.

I have a Logitech Harmony Touch which I paid about £80 for.
http://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/harmony-touch

It replaced my Harmony 650 which is actually the better (though less gadgety) device. It's just a shame they have a fairly common fault where buttons stop working after a few years.

It's all touchscreen and shit. It cost loads new - 2 or 300 quid.

I'm selling it because I've streamlined everything now, so we only really need two remotes (rather than the four or so we used to use).

It's exciting all right. What else it do? Could I turn on the ps4? Can I get like an infrared on button for the pc?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Harmon ... B00C80JFSS

It basically does everything.

Um... Maybe?

It's this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Harmon ... B000QEUTJC

This topic will do.

I've got a slightly embarassing and fucking irritating surround problem and I suspect I know what the answer is but I'll check with the hive mind anyway. After reading Hearthly's latest adventures and growing suspicious of my own setup I did a proper test and it turns out that I've never been getting surround sound out of my gear (at least not after moving back into my flat a while back). My setup is:

PC->HDMI->TV
PS4->HDMI->TV

then TV->optical->surround sound

Most people will be spotting the problem already which is that that last hop doesn't carry the audio for the back speakers. I tested this by doing PS4->optical->surround sound and noticed an immediate difference. Keeping that setup means the PS4 is sorted but the PC is then getting no sound out through the big speakers at all.

The only other inputs for my surround sound kit aside from the optical is "Coax" (whatever that is) and "six channel direct" i.e. three audio jacks carrying two channels each.

Looking at the ports on my PC coming from the on-baord sound there looks to be nothing suitable; it just has the generic three blue/green/pink ports which I believe are line in/stereo out/mic respectively.

Am I right in thinking that with what I've currently got, there's literally no way to get proper sound out of the PS4 and PC? And what are my potential solutions? I would really, really, really like to not have to basically chuck my entire surround kit out and buy new shit. The only other solution I can think of though is to get a dedicated sound card that has the "six channel direct" outputs, which might not be too big a wrench I suppose.

And on a related note, do we know why that last hop doesn't work? Optical is obviously capable of carrying all six channels because it works when the PS4 is wired directly to the surround sound so why does going from HDMI to optical (via the TV) lose that data?

Your PC *may* be able to do digital audio through it's line-out port using one of these

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fiio-L21-3-5mm ... B019OWCID6

Not all of them can though

Oh, and this is the speaker set I've got in case that matters: http://support.logitech.com/en_us/produ ... ker-system

You can also pull the HDMI audio using something like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extractor-Coax ... MI+to+coax

Either way, it's gonna cost ya (a little bit)

Cheers, Logitech!

Huh, that would be really useful. I suspect not as I'm using the on-board sound but let me dig out the details of my mobo...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CSL-8-channel- ... G9C3HM3MJJ

?

Alternative way of carrying the same digital sound signals as optical can carry but via electrical signalling instead of optical. You can get little adaptors to turn optical audio into electrical digital audio, should you need it.

First thing to do: dig around in your motherboard's manual and utilities. Often, these jacks are remappable, and can be stereo output + line in + mic in (as you say) or they can serve as 6x surround sound outputs. That's probably what you want.


TIL Bamba has me on ignore

Also good.

Heh, no, I did remember you posting something about it on the other thread but obviously missed the detailed explanation somehow.

Being able to remap the ports on my sound card would be ideal (although would then give me the issue of not being able to output to the currently attached stero speakers on my desk for the times I'm sitting here doing mousey keyboardey stuff, but I'll worry about that later). Otherwise I'll have a look at one of these external sound card dealeys.

Cheers folks, that's all a lot more hopeful of a situation that I was expecting.

When asked specific direct questions, we're pretty good as collective. When asked "What should I buy to watch films?"... that's when we get silly

The motherboard probably has some internal headers for front-mounted jacks. You may be able to repurpose one of those with a cable, although it'll probably be a headphone out rather than a line-out. Do you know the exact make and model of your motherboard?

XBox 360

I'm struggling to find the exact model but it's running Realtek audio drivers and I can apparently fuck around with port assignments in the registry like this:

https://www.reaper-x.com/2012/02/13/how ... cks-ports/

It's not an ideal solution, and I'm not sure why they apparently removed the ability to do this via their UI, but it's doable so I'll buy the required cables and give it a shot.

I'd completely forgotten the front audio ports even existed so yeah, I can use the headphone socket there to drive my desktop stereo speakers and that should sort me!

Classic Realtek.

To be fair it actually Just Worked. I dug out a set of the cables I needed and plugged everything in; it must've detected the presence of the cables and then let me choose 5.1 in the GUI. Running their test signal from that utility hit all speakers plus the sub correctly! So choosing 5.1 is enough to tell it to auto remap the back ports, which is nice.

I can also plug my desktop speakers into the front port and they work as well. The only problem is that after plugging the desktop speakers in it cuts audio to the surround sound. I need to actually unplug the desktop speakers before it'll resume sending to the surround sound. I wonder if there's a nicer way of flipping between them...

That's coz it's a headphone jack, innit. Cutting sounds to the speakers when you plug headphones in is a feature, not a bug. Find your motherboard manual and see if there's another line out header on the board somewhere. Although you're still gonna have issues -- I suspect you'll get only the L and R of a 5.1 signal.

Yeah, that occurred to me when I'd finished typing that. In fairness I don't use the desktop speakers all that much so it's not a massive hardship. I could maybe use the regedit remapping to change the front headphone socket to a line out. Flipping between 5.1 and stereo in the GUI would then probably change sound modes as I need.