okay, so I have 2 different sets of 5.1 surround sound speakers both hooked into my laptop, I want both to play at the same time... and I have no idea how to do it. Right now I have a sony 5.1 surround DVD combo plugged into the laptop via toslink digital audio, and a logitech 5.1 hooked up with analog 3.5 mini plugs, I can get both to work individually, but not together... I have a realtek onboard sound card the sony is currently hooked up to and a creative xfi external plugged into the PCI port on the side that the logitech is plugged into, I can also plug the logitech into the onboard sound if need be, please help! thanks in advance
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Sound question
(8 posts)
JKay, do you want both sets of speaker to play the same sound, or do you want them to be independent? If both the same, then look for multiple output jacks on one of the sound cards -- for example, one TosLink and one coax. You might also need to tell the sound controller software to output sound to multiple jacks.
If you want the speakers to be independent, then you will have to assign the audio device on a per application basis. Only one sound card can be the primary which will play the OS sounds. For each application that won't use the primary sound device, you will need to map it to the other one.
Does 5.1 + 5.1 = 10.2 ? Is DD 10.2 better than 7.1 ? It's one of those things that makes you go, "Hmmm..."
JKay, you aren't the first person to try this. Here is a long thread at thegreenbutton.com about it. I didn't read the whole thing, but there may be some ideas here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/foru.....58117.aspx
One poster mentions the idea of using a TosLink splitter. I see that they do sell these and they are quite inexpensive; under $10 US.
Finally, I had a thought. Since you want to use different parts of the two speaker sets, you could use the analog jacks and send the center/sub output to the Logitechs and the front and rear L/R audio to the Sonys. That might give you the best of both worlds -- mainly bass from the one and lots of volume from the others.
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