How to connect Subwoofer to PC

[koushick92]

Hi guys,

Not sure if i am posting under the correct thread.
I am trying to convince my friend at work to switch over to pc gaming. But he is concerned about how to make his subwoofer work on a gaming pc.

His subwoofer is as follows:
http/www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003KZKSVI/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This was his question:

"What I'd like to know is, for Blu-ray movies, how do I get the PC to output Dolby TrueHD/5.1 PCM/DTS Master-audio to the subwoofer? This is easy enough on the PS3 because you get the console to decode the surround signal internally and then it outputs this sound to the sub (the sub doesn't actually decode the soundtrack.

I assume it's better to stream sound from the graphics card rather than the motherboard?

Or I could just keep the PS3 for movies and not bother with a blu-ray drive (or any drive as you can download them all these days?)."

I persoanlly use headphones while gaming so i have no experience with this topic. I was wondering if any of you guys might have anything to add?

Thanks in advance

 

[Traciatim]

You can either plug your HDMI in to a receiver and it would work just like a regular DVD/Blu-Ray player, you can use the audio outs on your motherboard to have teh audio decoded and sent to all the channels you need, you sometimes get SPDIF depending on your motherboard, you can grab a sound card that does what you want... there are plenty of options.

 

[DeauteratedDog]

If I understand the question, and I may not, the decoding should work just like the PS3 - decode on the PC and feed the sub with either optical or HDMI. I feel pretty confident that it can be made to work - but it might take a little screwing around.

 

[americanaudiophile]

Since the lossless audio will only output from HDMI you would connect that to the system and feed the HDMI out from that to the monitor. Decodiing is done in the home theater system sub (which is not just a sub).