Surround Sound

I'm not exactly familiar with the  SONY DAVDZ260 5.1ch HDMI USB home cinema kit.

But most normal Home theater Receivers have inputs for RCA jacks in from like an old Tape Player.

Some times its called aux (auxiliary) input.  Look at what you have on the Sony.

You can get a mini jack (from the sound card of the computer)  to RCA jack converter.

Here is just one of millions, find best price and a company YOU trust to buy.

http://www.antonline.com/p_701163-NX_221004.htm

Yes, I made the connection from the DVD player home theater to sound card of the computer (mini jack) and there's sound alright but not surround, it's just a normal sound devided to the 5 speakers + subwoofer. I can switch to some of the feature sounds the DVD player amplifier provides such as Prologic II music and movie and dolby but there's no surround sound. Since i was told that this machine XPS 420 has a surround option in the sound card or something ( i am not a tech person, so i don't know much about the language) i thought there's something i have to do in the sound settings or someth, in device playback i tried to change configuration to 5.1 surround but when i clicked test i could only hear left and right sound (could be a problem there? i should hear all the speakers one by one when i run the test right?) The speakers are well connected coz i can hear the sound well when i play movies, but it's just not surround. This home cinema has in particular the surround feature, it's a latest model from Sony.

I don't know where the problem is.

The XPS420 audio is woefully lacking in quality, if you are using the onboard Sigmatel audio chip.

The quality is so bad, I had to replace my new Dell speaker set with a ten year old Gateway 2000 sound system in order to be able to use it.

I contacted Dell support about this and was told I needed to upgrade to an add on sound card.

Is this what you should expect from an $2,500.00 Dell XPS system?

You can be the judge.

That is true Boyd B

Unless you get like a $100 sound card, the onboard will only sound worse if you try to play it through a Home theater.  The Sigmatel is made to sound OK on $29.95 computer speakers.

On a more expensive system with nice speakers you will hear every flaw.

---

@korrson wrote:

That is true Boyd B

 

Unless you get like a $100 sound card, the onboard will only sound worse if you try to play it through a Home theater.  The Sigmatel is made to sound OK on $29.95 computer speakers.

 

On a more expensive system with nice speakers you will hear every flaw.

---

The Sigmatel onboard sound chip is what you might expect on a budget system, around $499.00.

 

It is so bad that Dell has stopped offering it on the XPS420. The speakers are not any better. Dell charges $50.00 for the cheaper set of speakers.

 

These come with a sub-woofer, if you can call it that. These speakers sound very much like Laptop speakers.

 

Yet all this comes with Dell's higher end systems.

 

Granted the XPS420 is the lowest of the XPS systems, but it does have the XPS logo all over it, so it should give much better audio performance than it does.

 

It is simply unusuable for any ordinay audio use.

If you want good sound this is what you need:

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=15855

There are several different models on the left of this page but any Creative Audigy or X-Fi  sound card will be much better than what you have.

They are on sale often at various online shops, so pick your favorite and one in your budget range.