audio - 5.1 3.5mm speakers into motherboard with stereo 3.5mm input
2014-07
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?
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.
As Skelly says, it would depend on your driver.
For me, it's this setting:
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.
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.