Optical port

[Andzon]

Hey,

 

I have a pair of Astro A40s but my PC has no optical port, how can I get one? Must I buy a soundcard, can I have an external optical port, is there any way to make it work?

[minibois]

Do you not have the 3.5mm cable?

[tlink]

some computers have a SPDIF header on the motherboard, you can probably get an spdif header adapter for that. really depends on your setup. for example: my laptop has  a mini spdif into the fucking headphone jack. its amazing. but back to the point, what are we working with here? laptop? desktop? mobo specs? also optical audio is digital so its like HDMI, you probably don't need a soundcard but could even use a usb spdif adapter.

[Andzon]

1 minute ago, Minibois said:

Do you not have the 3.5mm cable?

Yes I am using it now, but do I get surround sound like this? I feel it's not as good.

[Andzon]

1 minute ago, tlink said:

some computers have a SPDIF header on the motherboard, you can probably get an spdif header adapter for that. really depends on your setup. for example: my laptop has  a mini spdif into the fucking headphone jack. its amazing. but back to the point, what are we working with here? laptop? desktop? mobo specs?

Gaming desktop, I love the mixamp, but can only really use it for PS4, which I barely play on.

[minibois]

4 minutes ago, Andzon said:

Yes I am using it now, but do I get surround sound like this? I feel it's not as good.

3.5mm can do 5.1 surround, but not sure about 7.1 surround. 7.1 on a headset is a gimmick anyways, as 99% of the headsets saying they have this feature, just have simulated software 7.1 surround (rather than actually 7 speakers total).

Anyways, if you really want optical audio, you could look into getting a soundcard. Some feature the optical audio port, otherwise an AMP might work too.

[Andzon]

Just now, Minibois said:

3.5mm can do 5.1 surround, but not sure about 7.1 surround. 7.1 on a headset is a gimmick anyways, as 99% of the headsets saying they have this feature, just have simulated software 7.1 surround (rather than actually 7 speakers total).

Anyways, if you really want optical audio, you could look into getting a soundcard. Some feature the optical audio port, otherwise an AMP might work too.

So I could buy an AMP to connect to my current Mix Amp? Do I connect it via USB?

[jj9987]

3.5mm jacks can do 5.1 and 7.1 surround, but will require 3 or 4 jacks to be plugged in then. That is, if we are talking about real surround, not Dolby.

[tlink]

7 minutes ago, Andzon said:

Gaming desktop, I love the mixamp, but can only really use it for PS4, which I barely play on.

i can't actually find any documentation on the optical port for the mixamp and headset, what does it look like? your headset says it only connects via headphone jack which means it doesnt have real surround.

[pwn_intended]

"surround" on headphones is malarkey. Unless they ACTUALLY have more than 1 speaker per earcup, but those are generally USB headsets and still pretty pointless. And even those with multiple speakers per ear dont really provide any benefit. This is because your ears only need 2 speakers to hear "surround", you only have 2 ears, and having a single speaker directly next to each ear is all that you need. Having extra speakers in each earcup shouldn't really provide any extra information to your brain regarding position.

 

Also, having a "surround" mode on headsets with a single speaker per ear just turns on some software trickery to make it seem like a bigger soundstage, but if the game or movie (or whatever) was properly mastered, a set of standard headphones will still make it sound like "surround"

A simple test for this is to listen to binaural audio with literally any headphones you have.

Here is a somewhat humourous example showing it off, there are much better examples out there as well if you look