Hey all,

I am playing all of my music through the laptop, to the auxillary audio port, and out of the stock scion speakers.

I noticed on my laptop - which is windows xp - that when you go to control panel --> Sound and Audio Devices --> CLick on the Advanced button --> You can set your sound card to "output" to different types of speaker setups. This is what the screen looks like:



My question to anyone is - Which of these settings will output the BEST (or correct) quality sound out of the stock speakers?

Does this setting even matter? I've used the default setting this whole time (Desktop Stero Speakers) and the sound has been OK. When I get to see my car, I am going to play around with this setting and see what the difference in sound is - if any...

Anyone have a clue though which speaker setup would yield the best sound?
- sh00k

 

I would say try all of them until you find somthing that sounds good to you. Really not sure if the surrond sound options would do you any good, unless you have a sub and a center channel speaker. But try different settings and if you can do treble and bass settings then thats even better. I use Winamp to play mp3's on my computer and it has a whole equilzer of all the different frequencies for sound setup. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

quadrophonic (quad = 4)
probably the best bet
that's assuming your laptop will output to 4 speakers
if you are using the headphone jack and an adapter it only outputs stereo....so you can just try the stereo settings
headphone or Desktop stereo will probably be best

 

Awesome point, TXboxdriver....... Just wondering - how can I "Upgrade" then to have better quality sound?

Would this mean that I would have to buy (for example) an external (SoundBlaster) sound card like the one in this pic? It's an external USB sound card...



Thanks again for the good info,
- sh00k

 

The best output to use would be just a standard stereo output. Quadrophonic has four unique channels of audio. The radio in the xB has two unique channels just duplicated in the rear.

Edit: just use the Desktop stereo speaker selection.

 

GLN - you got that right.

This is the answer that I got from the same question - (coming from mp3car.com forums)

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Here is the deal. Though you haven't stated how you connected everything to your carputer, it is impossible to say for certain, but, most likely, you have a wire going from your sound card to your HU. This wire is "stereo", meaning, it carries two seperate audio signals. This is stereo. The HU then takes the "stereo" audio of the two signals, and does with it what it wants, basically sending the signals to the speakers it wants.

This is why what you set the computer to doesn't matter, as long as the sound card is sending out "stereo" audio. Also, that is the best the HU can accept, since the HU only has input for the 2 signals, and no more.

If by chance you have a different setup, unless the soundcard is connected to the stereo speakers with more then 2 signals, changing it to 6 speakers, 8 speakrers, theater etc... will make no difference. Thos setting only matter if the Soundcard has connections for more then 2 speakers, and you are using more then 2 speakers, which you probably are not, because of the limitation of your HU.

Also, sound moving from one speaker to another is not surrouond sound, that is stereo sound. Surround sound involves having subwoofers and tweeters in different locations, and specific sound signals being sent to individual speakers to give you the impression that you are "surrounded" by the sounds.
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Stero it is! Thanks to everyone for their input!
- sh00k