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I am planning to get a new computer and thinking about to go for 7.1 sound.

I already have a 5.1 speaker system and it seems wasteful (not to mention expensive) to go for a computer 7.1 speaker system when I already have so many speakers.

Is there any reason I couldn't or shouldn't just tack on another 2 speakers from elsewhere? Or is something more complicated going on which could / would make that sound shitty?

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  • What would you use to decode the signals for the additional two channels?
    – fixer1234
    Jan 8, 2015 at 15:48
  • I'd say a) yes, but b) why bother? How many sources of true 7.1 do you actually use with any regularity. Also c) Fixing the phase offsets/time delays of 7.1 is not an easy task & will only ever really work in a large room [read:Cinema] or if you never move your head, even if you get it right. & I guess d) how well-matched are this new pair? Will they complement or just detract from the original, matched, setup.
    – Tetsujin
    Jan 8, 2015 at 21:02

1 Answer 1

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If you're using analogue output (the Green, Orange, and Black 3.5mm jacks), then you can just plug in a pair of speakers into the Gray jack on the computer and position them to the right and left.

Here are the jacks on an 8-channel (7.1) computer system:

3.5mm Audio Output Jacks

And here are where the speakers go:

Speaker Placement Diagram

If you already have a 5.1 system, it will plug into the Green (Front Left/Front Right), Orange (Center/Subwoofer), and Black (Surround Back Left/Surround Back Right) jacks. You should be just fine plugging another speaker system into the Gray port (Surround Left/Surround Right) and positioning the speakers to create a 7.1 system. The re is no inherent sound quality loss with doing this, but you'll have to do more work to balance all the speakers manually since you're working with two separate speaker systems with their own volume controls.

New image added as my preferred speaker layout as a sound engineer. From SounDoctor which has a very nice article on the subject - including a stronger reinforcing of my idea that adding 2 more speakers is often more trouble than it's worth ;-)

enter image description here

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    As a sound engineer, these pictures of home setups with the sofa at the back of the room really make my ears itch. The rear & front speakers ought to be equidistant, at the sweet spot. They tweak the pic because very few people have a room large enough to get the rears in the right place. Setting it up like that pic leaves a huge hole in the rear soundfield. Also having the sides so close makes them far too prominent to be useful; they just become a distraction, even if you drop the levels. [but I may be off-topic for Super User;-))
    – Tetsujin
    Jan 8, 2015 at 21:10
  • Exactly the sort of advice I was hoping for (especially indicating that I should specifically plug them into the grey)! Jan 9, 2015 at 9:19
  • If the sound chip is a Realtek, at least make sure you get the control panel directly from them, not from Windows, as it has extra parameters you'll need to try get the sound set up correctly. realtek.com.tw/downloads [it's the HD drivers you need]
    – Tetsujin
    Jan 9, 2015 at 15:13
  • @Tetsujin Sadly there is a lack of diagrams; It was a bit of an effort just to find one that was labelled. I invite you to replace it with a proper one, though :) Jan 9, 2015 at 21:37
  • @DarthAndroid I added a new image & a link worth reading - didn't want to remove your existing image as even though I might argue against it from an engineer's perspective, it's how most people have to set it up, for space reasons.
    – Tetsujin
    Jan 10, 2015 at 10:05

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