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Dont think my PC - Audio Mixamp setup is working as good as it should

post #1 of 3
12/19/11 at 10:30pm
Thread Starter 

Alright so recently purchased a wired Astro Mixamp + HD 598 headphones (plan on using it for both PC/Xbox 360/PS3 so thats why I bought a Mixamp over a new Sound Card).

 

I have an Asus P5Q-E motherboard for audio on my pc (Windows 7)

(http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5QE/)

 

Which for Audio

"Enjoy high-end sound system on your PC! 

The onboard 8-channel HD audio (High Definition Audio, previously codenamed Azalia) CODEC enables high-quality 192KHz/24-bit audio output, jack-sensing feature, retasking functions and multi-streaming technology that simultaneously sends different audio streams to different destinations. You can now talk to your partners on the headphone while playing a multi-channel network games. All of these are done on one computer."

 

So going from the digital out on the back of my comp (optical) to my mixamp which then has my HD 598 connected to it. I made sure in my playback devices I have the S/PDIF sound set as the default and NOT the Mixamp USB connection (otherwise it gives sound via the usb), and im pretty sure the audio is coming in just stereo instead of 5.1. 

 

I mean I pulled up virtual barbra shop on my pc and it doesn't sound like surround at all, where as when I plug my headphones direct without mixamp into my  POS laptop (things a 7 + year old dell literally falling apart) the virtural barbra shop its like wow you can literally hear where everything is coming from and happening. 

 

I was expecting setting up the mixamp + hd 598 effectively on my pc to be this much of a pain, yet it doesnt seem to be working out in my favor. Would appreciate any help bigtime !

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post #2 of 3
12/20/11 at 1:53am

Virtual Barbershop is a binaural recording, meaning that it will only work with stereo headphones using Dolby Headphone will only ruin the effect. The Mixamp uses Dolby Headphone to try to simulate 5.1 or 7.1 speakers using just headphones. This means that you need a surround source (aka a game/movie) to take advantage of Dolby Headphone. 

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post #3 of 3
12/21/11 at 11:21pm

On top of this, there's an additional complication in that PC games work with PCM channels and generally aren't designed to encode Dolby Digital on-the-fly.

 

In other words, if your onboard audio drivers don't support Dolby Digital Live to send a Dolby Digital stream to the Mixamp over S/PDIF, then all you get over S/PDIF is stereo PCM, since it doesn't have the bandwidth for more uncompressed channels. The Mixamp only gets two channels worth of positional information and thus cannot function at its best.

 

This is if you insist on using the integrated audio codec as your source, anyway. Connecting the Mixamp via USB may allow it to have a 5.1/7.1 digital audio stream that way.

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