hello everybody
I am thinking of building a pc and have some silly questions.
On some of the better mother boards, there are jacks for an eight channel speaker system. I can't find anyone on the internet who seems to sell the speakers for these boards. there are six audio jacks and four of them are for speakers, but i can't find the speakers to even price them.
appreciate any info.
thanks
dan

hawkviper
yea but those are 5.1 (six speakers). the mother boards that i have been looking at have four jacks for eight speakers. I have seen an eight speker system designed for an audigy sound card, but this is an onboard system with four ;mini plug jacks.
thereis the asus av8 deluxe board in particular - http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1024725&CatId=1569
(don't know how to put in the link, how did you do that?)
I really don't want to buy the thing without knowing where to find the speakers, to say nothing of how much they cost.
thanks
dan

(I guess the link is automatic)

Use with Sound Blaster® Audigy™ 2 ZS sound cards for breathtaking 7.1 results with Dolby® Digital EX and DTS-ES movies and EAX ADVANCED HD games.

the reason that i'm wary is that it says that it is to be used with the audigy sound card, when the asus mother board had teh sound on board.

Audio
The A8V Deluxe comes with an AC '97 Sound CODEC (Realtek) which supports high quality 8-channel audio. It supports Audio Sensing and Enumeration Technology and S/PDIF out interface.

I tried the google appproach and didn't find a system that seemed to match up withthe above. will the creative system work with the AC '97 Sound CODEC (Realtek)?

AC '97 is just an onboard sound standard.

The reason it says 'use with audigy...' is because they're hardly going to advertise someone else products, are they?

Speakers are compatible with any sound output device.

Personally, I'd buy a motherboard with less looks and more features - I've never gone down the road of onboard this and onboard that. The most I want onboard, is USB, IEE1394, mouse & keyboard, serial ports - you know, 'computer techs' these days don't even know what a f***ing serial cable is, parallel port and NIC.

It's less to go wrong. Out of interest... why an asus? If you want it for overclocking, be aware that you can't fix your pci frequency in the bios - therefore, you're toasting your pci cards by increasing your FSB.

hawke
not interested in overclocking, nor do i really have a particular reason to go with the asus. but I want to find a 939 socket board with a gigabit lan. I would actually prefer
not to have the onboard sound, but i guess i havent seen the perfect board. I'm not a gamer or an overclocker. I want a board that is pretty fast and wont be outdated too soon. that may be asking a lot. what have you heard about the via chipset? and also do you think that the dual channel memory is worth the money?
thanks for your input.
dan

There is an argument about nvidia vs via... personally, I prefer VIA... they've got more practise at doing things right.. at the end of the day, it's personal preference... however, if it were me trying to sell you a mobo, I'd say go for an A-BIT or an MSI - They're both ultra reliable, and come with the gigabit lan.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1569

Tiger stocks a few 939 boards. =)

I stilll haven't been able to resolve the speaker issue. basically the affordable system that i have seen had the amplifier in the subwoofer and the sattelite speakers connect into that. the output from the computer is a single miniplug jack(I assume)
the boards that i see with the features that i want all have four mini jacks. I can't fiind the speakers. I did see one set of speakers that may, may have been workable, but they were like four hundred bucks. I have a set of 5 year old jbl two channel speakers that oi would love to be able to juat plug in, but that requires a single jack.
If i want the better board do i need to buy a cheap audio card that will accomodate the two channel speaker system?

by the way hawke thanks for the inpu8t about the motherboards.
thanks
dan

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.aspx?modelid=2003101


Features


* Meets performance requirements for audio on PC99/2001 systems
* Meets Microsoft WHQL/WLP 2.0 audio requirements
* Eight-channel DA converter (48KHz)
* Stereo AD converter (48KHz)
* Complies with AC'97 Rev 2.3 specifications:
o Jack sensing on Front-Out, Surround-Out, Cen/LFE-Out, Surround-Back-Out, Mic-In, Line-In, and Front-Mic-In
o Clock input support options:
+ 14.318MHz PLL (may be set to 24.576MHz) to eliminate crystal
+ 12.288MHz BITCLK input
o Integrated PCBEEP generator
o Interrupt capability
o Page and analog Plug & Play registers
* Three analog line-level stereo inputs with 5-b

question: what is jack sensing - if i plug in one set of speakers into one of the three
jacks, will it "sense" that jack and only send a signal through that jack?
If i play a cd with only one jack for just two speakers, would that be like playing the stereo with only one speaker hooked up? (bye bye amp)

still haven't found any speakers for this setup

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