Stupid Sound Card Question
Submitted by egearing on October 3, 2006 - 2:33pm
Is it possible to run two sound cards at the same time? The reason I ask is I would like to run MythTv into some pc surround sound speakers and also run my tv's audio out into the same speakers, obviously when not watching a recording or dvd on my myth box. I don't think it is possible, but I thought I'd ask to see if anyone had some ideas. The speakers in question only have connections for one audio device. Thanks.
Through Tv
I'm not sure what type of inputs are on your TV. But the way i have mine setup is to have all audio run through my TV, then out to my creative speakers. So regular tv, mythtv, etc all comes out the audio outputs of the television and into my PC speakers. I don't even have the PC speakers directly connected to my PC, just to the television. It works well for me.
Ryan
Can you please clarify what
Can you please clarify what you want to do, because I dont fully understand. Do you want to:
1. Hook up both audio systems to the computer at once so you can use your surround sound for movies\dvd's, and the tv's audio output for televisions (so basically switching from one output to the other depending on what you want to watch).
2. Hook up both audio systems to your computer at once so you can use both audio outputs at once (ie: have sound coming out of the tv speakers and the surround speakers simultaneously).
Let me know, and I may be able to help you out.
I would say your number one
inm8, I would say your number one is what I want to do.
Ryan, the problem is my tv is 2 ch stereo, but I want to hook up 5.1 surround sound. How would that work if I sent all audio thru the tv?
Ok well I guess the first
Ok well I guess the first step is to check what sort of inputs your surround sound equipment has (I am guessing you have a reciever\amplifier of some sort?) and also what outputs your soundcard has.
If your reciever has a spdif (either coax or optical) input, and your soundcard (or motherboard) has an SPDIF output then you will be able to output to both the television and the surround sound system, and just map a remote button to turn on the digital out (spdif).
If your reciever is a good one that has multiple outputs you could just have your reciever hooked up to your pc, and then have your surround sound and the tv speakers hooked seperately to the reciever. On most recievers i have dealt with you can turn on and off specific "zones" which would allow you to do what you want to.
Alternatively, if your reciever isnt a dedicated unit (ie: like the ones you get with the "All in one 5.1 surround sound systems") and you dont have an spdif output on your soundcard, you may have to use "headphone jack splitters" (I forget the proper name) which split one output into two. Im not sure how that will effect your sound quality, but thats pretty much your only option if you are in the situation I just described.
Since this is really dependant on what sort of equipment you have, you are going to have to do some reaserch on the features (and limitations) of your particular hardware. The options I listed above, with the second one being the best, most clean implementation, should help you decide what you are going to do.Ofcourse, if I were you, I would safe myself the bother and just use the surround sound speakers for everything. Most surround systems have an option to "force stero" which would mean that only the front left and right speakers, plus the subwoofer, would be operating. You could use that for tv viewing if you dont like having sound coming on through all the speakers.
inm8,
inm8,
Thanks for the great answer. I think I'll try the headphone splitter first. If that doesn't work, I may try another soundcard with the SPDIF output, but I'm kind of cheap, so cheap is always the first try for me. ;-) I don't know how much soundcards are with SPDIF, but I'm sure they are more than one without. Again, thanks for taking the time to give me a good answer to my silly little problem.