God Of Gaming

*Update* What a bummer, the aperion audio speakers are only sold inside USA, they don't ship them outside. I checked out the stores around here and took a liking to Yamaha NS-777 3-way towers. They are way cheap, with under 200 euro per piece, and look sturdy. I'm thinking of getting 4 of these and maybe matching them to their center channel model NS-C444, I think this will sound killer and is still about 900 euro total. I need to look around for a 10-inch or 12-inch subwoofer. The multichannel amplifiers around here are not very powerful and are quite expensive, so I asked Emotiva how much would it cost to ship their XPA-5 over here, waiting for an answer now. On the PC end, I decided finally on Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD, which I'm gonna connect with analog cables, though I might try out the HDMI connection as well. I'm not sure whether I'd need a preamp or a receiver, I think the sound card itself might be able to act as a preamp. *another update* The subwoofer might be Velodyne CHT 12Q, though I'll look at some more choices. Still waiting for an answer from Emotiva, but if the shipping is too expensive, I might have to settle with some receiver instead. I found out the four NS-777s and the NS-C444 will actually cost me only 800 euro with delivery included if I order them online, that would be an amazing deal I believe. But their quantities are limited, so I'm afraid they might get sold out before I save enough money. *yet another update* Emotiva answered, seems like purchase + shipping of UMC-1 + UPA-500 (which should be powerfull enough, the yammies take up to 250W at 6ohm, with 100W nominal, and the UPA-500 would do 100W per channel at 6ohm I think) would cost 1250 $, quite expensive I guess, but the quality should be far better than a receiver at this price, so I'll be saving cash now

BTW, the DAC in the UMC-1, is it better or worse than the DAC in the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro? I'm asking since I'm wondering whether it would be better to get the Fatal1ty Pro and use analog connections to the UMC-1, in which it would probably only work as a preamplifier, or get the X-Fi Titanium HD, which btw is supposed to be a much better card, and use optical s/pdif connection with DDL/DTS-C. I found out that DTS Connect has quite a bit of delay so it only works well for music, and Dolby Digital Live works almost fine for movies and games, but both are lossy and at 48 KHz, which makes me doubt which of the above would be the better solution. Also, I'm wondering if I go with Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD and connect it with HDMI cable to the UMC-1, would it matter that the HomeTheater HD outputs a rather narrow range of 40 Hz - 15 kHz, or is this only for the analog connections?

I've almost graduated from university and will be looking for my own apartment after that. I will probably be a tenant for a while before that. So I don't know what kind of floor would I have yet But for the sake of acoustics, I'm not likely gonna use a carpet. Back at home there's parquet on the floor and even my cheap 30W subwoofer makes all the furniture and the windows shake and gets neighbours from 4 floors below come to complain , so I can't even imagine what a 500W sub could do, then again I will probably never get to try the new system over there...

Great, then I'll probably go with that setup, as long as I find where to buy it from (shipping it from USA could be way too pricey). But first I need to upgrade my PC since it is becoming kind of outdated. BTW, this subwoofer has 500W of power, how far away should I place it from the PC in order to keep the hard disk drives safe from the vibrations? Would it be far enough if I put the PC on the left of the desk, and the subwoofer - on the right?

So, let me try to conclude what I learned - what can I expect if I get, let's say, Creative X-Fi Titanium HD sound card and use Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect to output 5.1 channel audio from games, movies and music via the optical out to Emotiva UMC-1 decoder, and connect that to an Aperion Bravus IIa 10D powered subwoofer and Emotiva XPA-5 powered amplifier with 4 bookshelf speakers (Aperion Intimus 5B) and one center channel speaker (Aperion Intimus 5C). Any problems with this setup?

I'd say I could pay $2500 +/- for the sound system and a sound card with nice APIs including eax, ds3d and openal

I dont have consoles and I don't watch TV, so I'm only gonna plug in my PC and nothing else. So although that umc-1 looks nice, it has a lot of features that I'm not gonna use and I feel like I'm paying extra. Why won't simple potentiometers do the job just as well? Besides, is it really that bad to control the gain digitally from the PC? I think it uses dithering on it?

hey guys, I was wandering, instead of buying an expensive preamp to control the gain, can't I just buy 6 cheap pots (one for each channel), put knobs on them, mount them in a box and connect them between the amplifier/subwoofer and the sound card?

Actually I think the problem is in the smaller core size or the new transistors, one guy removed the cap and attached a d14 directly onto the chip, and if anything he even got worse temps this way... I'm still getting 3770K for the pci-e 3.0 and hd4000, and probably oc-ing it to 4.4-4.5, surely will be slower than 2600K at 4.8-5.0, but I think it would be fast enough for my needs.

^That (2.) was optimistic idea, but now that ivy bridge came out, the results are tragic ^_^

Here's a few that I tried on Win7 and had problems with: Need For Speed II SE (did not start) Need For Speed Porsche Unleashed (did not start) Half-Life (it started, but there was a bug in the console) Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (the game works, but the map editor does not) Colin McRae Rally (did not start) There probably are more games that do not work properly or not at all under 7, but after I had problems with these I got sick of it and dualbooted. BTW they might work with a virtual machine, but since this is essentially an emulator, I'd expect lower performance so I haven't tried. Besides, XP takes just about 20 GB more (together with updates, drivers and essential programs) which is the size of one modern game or ripped blu-ray movie, so it's not a problem.

Too many to count, and my favorite ones are between them. Maybe some of them can run on 7 too, I haven't tried, I simply avoid compatibility problems by installing anything older than 2005 on XP and anything newer on 7

What about XP? I use it way more than 7, and most of my favorite games are installed on it

I think I'll go with Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional sound card, and connect that subwoofer directly to it, and connect the 5-channel amplifier directly to the sound card as well, and connect the 4 bookshelf speakers and the center channel speaker to the amplifier. Is it going to work like that, or do I still need a preamp between the sound card and the amplifier? I'm asking since someone told me amplifiers need a lot of input voltage and sound cards don't output enough for that. EDIT: Waco just said the same thing

That UMC-1 you just showed me.