audio - 5.1 3.5mm speakers into motherboard with stereo 3.5mm input

08
2014-07
  • Paul

    I have an Intel DQ670W motherboard, with 

     1 x Stereo Out
 1 x Microphone In
 1 x Line In

    3.5mm on the rear panel, with Stereo and Microphone repeated on the front panel.

    I have some Logitech 5.1 speakers, all 3.5mm, so

     1 x Front
 1 x Rear
 1 x Sub / Center

    Clearly, in traditional analog, I can only plug the front speakers in.

    I am wondering if there is a way use these speakers with some sort of inbetween connection. I was looking at USB to 5.1 but really, the USB stick is an actual sound card, and I want to use the sound card on-board.

    I see that the motherboard has AC97 headers and HD Audio headers. I am not what this means, where one should be used in place of another. What is the difference?

    This http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-dq67ow.html says that there are three audio output channels, which makes me wonder if the back panel inputs can be changed to outputs.

    Can they?

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    Related Question

    windows xp - Stereo sound through whole 5.1 speaker set - is it possible with WinXP or 7?
  • Tomek Z.

    Is it possible to "upmix" (split) stereo output from games, winamp, youtube and so on through 5.1 speaker set? Movies from DVD or some games uses all 6 speakers, but most of today's usage does not.

    I know foobar2000 can upmix stereo MP3 to all speakers, I'd like to process all stereo sound that way.

    Is there any solution for Windows XP or 7?

    EDIT: I'm talking about onboard 5.1 sound output AC97 nForce2 chipset in my case. Definitely low-end. EDIT2: No digital output, 3 analog mini-jacks there.


    • Related Answers
  • RJFalconer

    As Skelly says, it would depend on your driver.

    For me, it's this setting:

    screenshot of Realtek Audio Manager

  • skelly

    Yes it's possible, though it might depend on your sound card drivers. I use a Creative X-Fi card and the Creative Control Panel app lists two faux surround modes for upmixing stereo: Stereo Surround and Stereo Xpand. If I remember correctly, the former option does what you need, it basically puts the stereo signal from the front L+R spakers in the rear L+R speakers too, I don't remember what happens to the center channel though, it's been a while since I've used a surround speaker set.

    Check your driver controls for any similar-looking options.

  • nik

    If your hardware has a 5.1 output path, the upmix will be supported.

    If you are wiring your audio output to external equipment through a stereo path,
    you will be limited to that.