Av Receiver for sound

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Thinking about using a AV Receiver to power some Wharfedale dx1 5.1 speakers i have, i'm guessing just optical out from the motherboard to the receiver? , anyone else use a receiver?
 
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Unless motherboard comes with Dolby Digital or DTS encoding software only those sources with already DD/DTS encoded sound (like movies) give 5.1 over optical.
 
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Unless motherboard comes with Dolby Digital or DTS encoding software only those sources with already DD/DTS encoded sound (like movies) give 5.1 over optical.
its a Yamaha HTR2071, picked it up today in the sales for £109 brand new, .my motherboard is the Aorus AX370-Gaming 5, only want it for game sounds really
 
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Optical or HDMI. I use the latter as I can properly set everything up and get 5.1 showing in windows. Does come with its own caveats using HDMI though in that the av receiver will be treated as a phantom monitor.
 
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As has been mentioned already; HDMI would be better, if it doesn't cause hassles mentioned above.

With optical; as Esat has pointed out; the audio stream needs to be encoded with Dolby Digital or DTS in order for it to support 5.1. Vast majority of PC games don't have Dolby Digital or DTS, unlike console games which do, so Dolby Digital Live (most common) is required to encode the audio stream with 5.1 in real time. Unless you have a premium motherboard that has it, you'd need to buy a sound card that has DDL.

It will work without DDL though, connecting the AVR to the optical on the motherboard; but you'd be sending stereo to the AVR, which will apply Dolby Pro Logic II to upmix the stereo to 5.1.

Works to fill all speakers with sound, but you won't get the accuracy of sound placement because the incoming audio data is just stereo.

Easier to use HDMI if you can.
 
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Thanks for the info guys, so its just a hdmi from the gpu into hdmi in? , or would i need a hdmi arc out to a monitor as well? (for set up then remove?) :D
 
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Thanks for the info guys, so its just a hdmi from the gpu into hdmi in? , or would i need a hdmi arc out to a monitor as well? (for set up then remove?) :D

Yup a single cable from the HDMI on the GPU into the HDMI in on the AV receiver and voila. As mentioned, it does come with a slight caveat in that the AV receiver will appear as a phantom monitor (so a second monitor in your system). Set your monitor setup as extend desktop and select the AV receiver as the audio out and job done. just ensure once setup you go into the speaker config and set it up as 5.1 as by default it will be stereo normally.

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Yup a single cable from the HDMI on the GPU into the HDMI in on the AV receiver and voila. As mentioned, it does come with a slight caveat in that the AV receiver will appear as a phantom monitor (so a second monitor in your system). Set your monitor setup as extend desktop and select the AV receiver as the audio out and job done. just ensure once setup you go into the speaker config and set it up as 5.1 as by default it will be stereo normally.

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Cheers, will give this a go :)
 
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Got it all set up it works great, i see what you mean about the phantom monitor bit, i just set it as small as possible no big deal , i have the arc out going to an input to my tv so i can just switch to that input to change settings etc. :) the surround sound experience with a set up like this is so much better than some of the all in one systems i have owned (Creative inspire 6.1, Logitech Z680)
 
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Got it all set up it works great, i see what you mean about the phantom monitor bit, i just set it as small as possible no big deal , i have the arc out going to an input to my tv so i can just switch to that input to change settings etc. :) the surround sound experience with a set up like this is so much better than some of the all in one systems i have owned (Creative inspire 6.1, Logitech Z680)

Nice, yeah can be a bit odd with phantom monitor and sounds like you have done what I done and just set said phantom monitor to a small resolution. Found it makes neglible impact on performance so all good in that regards also.
 
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