kmonahan

Hi sprovo,

I had a similar problem which I posted about a while ago - The discussion can be found here - 3 audio outputs into two audio inputs?

I assume that you have two audio sockets on your laptop - one for microphone input and another for headphone output. Therefore, as 'PunterCam' said, you will need an External 5.1 Surround Sound Card (that connects through USB) in order to get the full effect from your speakers.

Basically, you will have three leads coming from your 5.1 speaker system and these will connect into the back of the external sound card. The sound card will then connect into your laptop through a supplied USB cable and that should be it!

A word of advice though; If you are using Windows Vista, then avoid any external sound cards made by Creative. They simply will not work properly with Vista. I am in the process of returning the Creative card that I bought recently because it will not give EAX and CMSS-3D support in Vista. Creative have been very unhelpful in trying to solve the problems and it seems from looking at their Support forums that nearly all their products are plauged with problems in this operating system and Creative are very slow in releasing driver fixes for these products. As far as I can gather though, their sound cards will work okay in Windows XP.

sprovo

i havnt bought an external sound card yet because im still unsure of what exactly i need. i dont want to purchase something that wont work well or the wrong item. i would like to use an optical cable too so i need to find one with that too. anyone know of anything?

would this be the best one for me?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creative-70S...d_sbs_ce_img_2

cohen

If you do buy an external sound card go for a sound card called "Lambda." At School on a dell laptop the motherboard cracked and then the sound card failed. So we got a Lambda and it works really good.

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