Have you got the speakers yet to complete the surround sound set up. If so, have you set them up?

I'll be doing it first thing 2moro, I need to sort all my cables out as its VERY congested at the moment (its like spaghetti down there!) and will let you know the outcome, hopefully all will go well.

FYI: I noticed the sub only has a slot to hook up to the amp, so all the speaker cables must hook upto the amp, yes?

Look on page E-7 of the Yamaha speaker manual. It shows you exactly how to hook up the speakers. The small satellite speakers connect to the speaker outputs on the amp using speaker cable. Make sure you wire the minus (-) connectors on the speakers to the (-) connectors on the amp, and do (+) to (+).

The subwoofer left mono socket connects to the subwoofer output which is marked as connector 9 on page 10 of the RXV-361 amp manual. Use a phono-to-phono cable for this.

Report back when you've done this.

Got the speakers working today, although I couldnt get the optical cable from the PC into the amp to work for some reason, other than that it's a full success. Btw, thanks again for all your help on this...the sound quality is absolutely amazing, so kudos to all of you.

I love a happy ending

Yes, a very happy ending indeed. Just hope the PC sound problem is a small and short one that I can fix to make it The End.

I'll need an additonal cable to hook upto the PC and Amp, the PC has an optical output which is the S/PDIF In slot, apparently. So would something like this suffice?

OK, first lets sort your 'ins' from your 'outs'.

Any socket marked Out or Output is where sound or pictures comes out from. So when you think about your computer and you want sound out of it, you make a connection from the output. OK.

If you want to get sound in to something (like your AV amp) have a guess which type of socket you use - in or out. Yep, you got it, it's the In or Input.

So just for absolute crystal clarity, we're connecting a PC card OUTPUT to the AV amp INPUT.

[[[ You won't get sound if you connect a sound card socket marked Input to any amplifier socket. And you won't get sound if you connect the sound card output to any amplifier socket market input]]]

Now we've got to sort out the style of signal connector.

You say your sound card is a Realtek. I'm guessing you probably got this info from something you saw on the PC screen rather than reading the brand of the card directly. Am I right???

Realtek make silicon chips. These go on to lots of different manufacturers sound cards. So the info your computer has given you is probably the chip makers details because that is the most appropriate piece of information if you need to get new drivers. It isn't the brand of the card. This means I can't check what sockets are on the card.

To be absolutely sure of getting the correct cable you should really try to find out the brand of your sound card. The answer is not Realtek.

Now lets help you with your S/PDIFs, Opticals and TOSlinks.

Look at page 10 of your Yamaha Amp manual. See the sockets in the box marked? These are the digital inputs. The two square ones are Optical TOSlink connectors. The round one is a COAX connector. These all come under the banner S/PDIF. So you can have an Optical S/PDIF or a COAX S/PDIF. What you CAN'T have is a connection from an Optical output to a COAX input or vice versa without some sort of adapter/converter box in the middle.

On an amplifier the difference between Optical and Coax is obvious - Optical is a square connector, Coax is round. On a sound card the difference might not be so easy to spot. If the card has a square socket like the amp then you can be 99.99% sure it is Optical. But if all the sockets look like the small headphone jack sockets like you would see on an MP3 player then you need to find out some details about your sound card.

The reason is that both Optical and Coax can be connected with a plug that looks like a small headphone jack. Find out what type of digital signal your card outputs (optical or electrical) and you'll be able to choose the correct cable with the right types of plugs on each end.

The final bit of the puzzle is getting the sound card to give a digital signal out via its Output socket. This might already be switched on, or you might need to go in to the software to switch the feature on.




OK, so you've got a bit of homework to do. Find out some more info about your audio card and it will help you choose the correct cable to connect to the amp.


Regards

Chris

According to my invoice from Alienware, my sound card is "High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio - Standard", Unfortunately thats all I could find in regards to info. If it helps for any reason, my PC is a Area-51 7500 Alienware. I was looking at the different sound cards and the basic one (which I have) is still labelled the same. I'll try emailing them and see if I get any joy finding out the specifics.

It does however use realtek high definition drivers to work. I wont be able to check the back of the PC till tomorrow, since I'm away from it right now. But I do have another query in the meantime:

How would I connect the Wii to the surround sound system? Would I need to connect the component cables to the amp, and if so how would I select it as a video source from there?

As for the PC, I'm guessing that the one optical slot was an input one and not an output one, although I could be wrong and find another one there, but I'm doubtful. So it'll possibly end up being a coax...

Thanks again

From Alienware's .co.uk web site:

# Connectivity - Standard Audio:

* Six 1/8” analogue jacks (Rear)
* One Coaxial digital output (Rear)
* One Optical digital output (Rear)
* One 1/8” analogue headphones jack (Front)
* One 1/8” analogue microphone jack (Front)

So it looks like you have a choice of either Optical or Coax.


Now you need to have a look at the digital output sockets on the sound card. Describe accurately what they look like. Your choices are:
[LIST][*]They both look like small headphone sockets[*]One looks square, the other is a small headphone socket[*]One looks square, the other is round but bigger than a small headphone socket[/LIST]

I can confirm that the optical output is a no-go. I've tried changing options in both sound menus with no success, I dont even think that the sound card detected the cable tbh. The others do look like headphone sockets, like that of the front of the PC. Now according to the layout of the back panel from the Realtek HD Audio Manager, the slot marked "S/PDIF-Out" is black and the Orange slot is the S/-PDIF-In.

Any suggestions on what steps I should now take? Ignore my comment about the Wii, btw..it works like a charm on its own. However, I do have one final thought for you...what would you consider the best number to set everything at in a medium size room?

This is slightly interesting...I clicked on properties for the realtek output and a menu came up, I took a screenshot of it on my server here

How have you tried the optical out? What cable did you use, what was the shape of the end connector?


That doesn't tell me anything useful Adam

I do have an optical cable (which I'm using for the surround sound at the moment) and I plugged it into matching slots on both the PC and the Amp. Despite it definitely being an optical slot on the PC, I couldnt get it to work. Besides, it seems that the output for S/PDIF is infact an RCA cable according to that picture I linked in my previous post.

UPDATE: Scratch that, turns out that I somehow messed up with the Audio Manager, somehow not selecting 5.1 and instead stereo. It now works through optical. HOORAH!!!!

I just want to thank all of you for your help with all of my issues and taking the time to make sure I do everything right. All of its perfect, just waiting on the delivery of another optical cable so I dont have to switch them all the damn time...once that arrives, I'm finished. All problems resolved, all things sorted. So thanks again