Best AMP for PC 5.1 Gaming Analog?

[RockSteadyYeti]

Hello All,

New to the forum, hope this is in the right place. I am trying to come up with the best Amp for my PC gaming setup. What I want to do it to cut out having to have a digital signal come out of my PC. I am currently using a Soundblaster Z. I have Toslink going to a Pioneer Elite 5.1 thats 10+ years old and then out to 2 M&K speakers for FL FR and then JBL Control 1 for center RL+RR. I am using a powered Sub from Aperion.

What I would like to do is have an amp that can take the individual analog signals from my sound card and pass them out to my speakers. I will need some control over gain for each channel, but not much. My plane was to get a multi-room amp and just have it push sound out to all my speakers letting my soundcard perform all of the signal processing for positional audio and such. My total budget for the amp and extra cables is around 1000.00. I was thinking of getting either of these amps. Has anyone else tried this before? My thoughts are I upgrade my amp very rarely, but my PC gets a new sound card much sooner. Please any thoughts on other options or if this will even work would be GREAT! Also do they make some type of mixer I could use between my sound card and amp to control levels? THANKS AGAIN

 

Amazon.com: Niles SI1230 Series 2 12-Channel Amplifier (FG01704): Electronics

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004S3PY9M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3EYDDCAT8EC38&coliid=I6SR4Y395LLH5&psc=1

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004S3PY9M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3EYDDCAT8EC38&coliid=I6SR4Y395LLH5&psc=1

[pooger]

I haven't done anything like this, but it makes complete sense. If you're willing to hit the top of your budget, I'd look at the emotiva 5 channel

 

Emotiva

 

Or, for less money (and maybe no less sonic quality) this one from outlaw audio

 

http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/5000.html

 

alhough I'm sure the are other companies that make competing projects. The ones you linked didn't seem worth the cost to me. If you're willing to buy used, and don't mind a "short stack" of stereo amps, you could also get three crown DC-75s, or Hafflers, or? But I have worked with systems that used both emotiva and outlaw electronics, and they are both quite good.

[GladLock]

So I'm looking the Outlaw and Emotiva Amps and both look like great choices but I have one big question. How would you adjust the volume of the speakers? Other than adjusting the volume via a GUI in MS Windows - is there another component that needs to be connected into the mix in order to adjust the volume externally?

[Audio_ELF]

So I'm looking the Outlaw and Emotiva Amps and both look like great choices but I have one big question. How would you adjust the volume of the speakers? Other than adjusting the volume via a GUI in MS Windows - is there another component that needs to be connected into the mix in order to adjust the volume externally?

You'd have to adjust the volume via MS Windows. I don't know of a (reasonably priced) 5 channel volume but you could add in 3x https://emotiva.com/products/electronics/control-freak to get the level to a rough maximum and then day to day use the Windows control.

 

If that is no good for you, then look at getting an old AV processor to go between the computer and any power amp setup - things like Arcam's AV9 and older Rotel models, even things like Lexicon and Krell / Bryston can be picked up for a few hundred here.

 

If you're of the DIY persuasion multi-channel volume control - diyAudio might be of interest.

 

If none of these suit you, and you are not happy relying on Windows volume control, then your alternative is to buy a AV Receiver with multi-channel inputs rather than a power amplifier.