Car PC audio... 5.1??

[Johnny A]

Hi guys, bought myself a Astra-G coupe and am in the process of fitting a car pc setup I built up a long time ago (and never did anything with).

Anyways as it's a PC it needs some audio amplification and I have a 4-channel amp for this job.

Q1:
Now obviously the on-board audio has a single 3.5mm line-out jack which gives you left and right channels. How would I wire this to my 4-channel amp? Would I need to just get the left and right channels going into the first two (of four) phono ports on the amp? Or would I need to split the left and right channels in two so all four phono ports are taken up??

Q2:
Is there an audio card out there (PCI card) for a PC that generates 5.1 surround sound BUT decodes it too and has all 6 channels as 3.5mm jacks on the back of it so I can plug each channel directly into my amp?? (maybe ignoring the front speaker for now and adding my Sub later)?? All the ones I seem to see have only one plug for the Surround sound and require a decoder.

Here is a pic of my dash so far (still needs finishing - bare in mind I am crap at sanding and painting):

[Trevor]

Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 Sound Card - High-quality surround audio

http://www.redstore.com/GENSDC002

I am sure I have one lying around doing nothing somewhere. I will have a look in a bit. But they are only about £16 new anyway.

[SteveM]

I can give you info on how i do mine, so you can have x-over, eq on all 6 channels etc. Bit busy at the min to go into it, pm me if you want more info

[SteveM]

ok, might be more info than required, but might be useful to someone else also....

Firstly, you need ASIO drivers for your card, or if these are not available.. ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver

next, setup Virtual audio cable, which acts kind of like an emulated sound card..Virtual Audio Cable - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

This can be setup with whatever number of channels you require (for your input remember) probably 2 if just wanting a stereo source, or 6 if you really want full 5.1 in the car. You also need to know a bit about which bit rate/depth you need but you can experiment.

Next, setup your front end (centrafuse etc) to use the Virtual audio cable as your default sound output.

Lastly, install (needs to be purchased *cough*) the awesome Audio mulch...AudioMulch electronic music performance and composition software

Which is basically a software mixer/midi sequencing package. This has a good feature, which loads last settings and starts to "play" when it's launched

using this, you can basically take any channel from your source, and route it to any output (on your actual soundcard, due to ASIO support) but via any VST effect you like. For example, i have centrafuse outputting in stereo, where it goes through a 3 way crossover (can control all levels, cutoff curve etc)whic puts mids and highs to 1 output of the soundcard (front left and right on my 4ch amp), and all bass to another (both going to sub, bridged) all via a 32 band eq. That's quite simple, but you could put all the channels to the correct place for 5.1 etc and have loads more control over the output, or have channels spare for headphones etc etc



(i don't actually have a pic of the layout in the car, but you get the idea. soundcard outputs (not just 1 card either..) at the bottom, centrafuse source at the top, crossovers etc in the middle, and draw lines with what you want to send where! is great fun messing around with it while it's playing lmao

and 1 more tip, i have audio mulch and centrafuse starting up with high processor priority, which means it doesn't jump when the audio starts playing, which it does otherwise (at least for me..i was happy when i fixed this one lmao)

start /13 centrafuse.exe
start /13 Audiomulch.exe

in a bat file to run on startup

(13 being priority, equiv to high)

[Johnny A]

wow good work steve!!