What to use for 2.1 editing and 5.1 gaming and movies?

[CodgerPunk]

Currently on my PC I am using an old 5.1 in a box - set of Speakers, because they were small and inexpensive, and sounded good to me at the time. They are Klipsch Synergy Quintet II (https://www.klipsch.com/products/quintet-ii-home-theater-system). But now that I am disabled and starting a YouTube channel (isn't everybody) I have turned off the Cable TV, and am going 24/7 on the PC, all my music, all my movies, and my livelihood comes through the PC now.

My 5.1 Audio in the Living room, are old Klipsch F2s, that I got from a pawnshop near me. And I finished off the rest with some white and some black Quintet II speakers from the same dealer who sold me the ones for the PC. He had some single pieces that had been replaced from RMA etc. But When I got the F2s, they already looked like they were rode hard and put away wet, but they still have the Klipsch sound, that for 25+ years I was convinced was the apex of audio speaker refinement. So much so that when I finally decided to pull the trigger on the speakers for the PC, I didn't even look for reviews past Amazon. Because I had been in the Klipsch house for so long.

But my question is, If I am going to build a 5.1 system from a powered monitor of some kind? Other than more power cords and running the speakers as some type of balanced connector, what else am I going to have to take into account?

I would like to use the front speaker when doing Video Editing to have be neutral for the edit, but that isn't as important to me when watching a popcorn flick.

 

[maxxone]

I'm going down a similar tunnel then you are. My suggestion is to get an HDMI AV receiver connected to a NVIDIA graphics card. HDMI is the best cable to transfer music from a PC. Then build from there. I don't have experience with AMD cards, so I don't know how it compares.

 

[Steve Dallas]

What is your budget?

 

[theyellowspecial]

Is your PC acting as a source for your living room setup, or are you moving strictly to desktop?

 

[CodgerPunk]

I already have have had the receiver and the video card for a few years. Like I said I was using it with the Klipsch Synergy line. Which at the time their entry level regular speakers. They were not the Promedia that were meant to be connected to a computer.

The receiver is a Pioneer elite. I don't remember the model number, it is currently in a cooled wall unit behind the PC, I'll be pulling it out next week to do maintenance on the PC. I chose the receiver because it was one of the last that still had a discreet 5.1 Input. So I can feed connect a 1/8th TRRS plug into the sound card and get two RCA outs one for each channel. Now I could go with an Encoded solution like the Nvidia's that takes the 5.1 output stream and reencodes it to either Dolby Digital, or DTS. When I started doing this, the PCs were not able to do this encoding in real time. But I have done it through an encoder, as a test, and as a backup method should this receiver die.

My PC is in my YouTube Studio, it is attached to my house, But to keep the taxes simpler, I have minimized the connections between the PC in the Studio and the house. I have other PCs in the house, and they are all on the same 10 Gigabit network. The PC is a AMD 3950, 64 GB RAM, 8GB SSD, with 12TB on a Mirror RAID. It still has my GTX 1080 GPU in the case as I still try to get a RTX 3080 (possibly RTX 3090) to put into the build. I am also running an Ultra-wide screen for use in video editing.

For the Budget, I was thinking ball parking 4@R-41M or R-51M, A 52C for Center, and a 12SW for the Subwoofer although I was seriously considering SVS as well. My PC was setup with a JBL sub that has been all beyond hope for a while and I was just editing on the DT880s. So for the Klipsch stuff I was considering; a ball park is about $700 with some of the Tax. So a budget say, up to a thousand. I still have more to get on the PC and a camera to update as well.

 

[maxxone]

But my question is, If I am going to build a 5.1 system from a powered monitor of some kind? Other than more power cords and running the speakers as some type of balanced connector, what else am I going to have to take into account?

You're going to want and HDMI receiver I think. Most HDMI receivers only do 60FPS, so that may be a problem unless you run two monitors. Surround sound has limitations for bandwidth which I believe only HDMI can fulfill. (if I'm wrong someone chime in please.) I do believe that an optical audio connection would work fine for a 2.1 instead of 5.1 PC specs look really good but the 8gb ssd must be a typo. As for speaker selection, I'm still a novice and someone else is better off guiding you on them.