Projector / Sound setup help

[southafricanrob]

Hi guys - I need some quick advice - I am hosting a movie night at my cafe tomorrow and am struggling to get the setup working.
So far I have:
- Vivitek Projector (HDMI & VGA inputs)
- Logitech x530 5.1 system
- Raspberry Pi or WDTV as the media player.

The sound system is all wired into the roof etc and we use it to play music etc during the day from a desktop PC with a 5.1 sound card. The problem I am having is getting 5.1 sound form the media player to the speakers. Best I can do is to take stereo from the media player and use an adapter to play on the 5.1 - so effectively losing the surround sound option. This is pretty NB, firstly as its sounds good ;-) and secondly because the speakers are in odd places and so I need to be able to tweak the individual levels up and down a bit.

So short of finding some sort Optical to PC 5.1 converter my only option is to use the cafe desktop to play the movie. Sound will work great but it means running a 15m VGA cable to the projector.

So I guess my question is:
Will I end up with a really crap low quality pic using a VGA cable of this length? (My display card is the built in Intelq35 chipset with VGA and DVI ports only)

 

[saor]

Does the projector have the necessary audio outputs for 5.1 / surround?

 

[southafricanrob]

Does the projector have the necessary audio outputs for 5.1 / surround?

No it has a 3.5 audio out so if I set the media player to use HDMI for audio then best I can get out is stereo. I can set the media player to use optical / analog stereo instead but that doesn't help much i wouldnt think

 

[saor]

Hmmm - pretty sure you could work this with a Chromecast or similar media device. Chromecast into the projector HDMI - pc streaming video to chromecast and audio to speakers. Personally I'd try move the desktop pc as close as possible to the projector and use a long video cable if it's just a once-off thing.

 

[southafricanrob]

Hmmm - pretty sure you could work this with a Chromecast or similar media device. Chromecast into the projector HDMI - pc streaming video to chromecast and audio to speakers. Personally I'd try move the desktop pc as close as possible to the projector and use a long video cable if it's just a once-off thing.

Thanks - I have a chromecast but didnt realise you could separate out the audio. I will give it a try - any good recommendations for Windows chromecast app (probably using VLC to play the movie)

 

[saor]

I'm not sure about how exactly to separate the audio tbh - our chromecast is buried away in a box right now, else I'd hook it up and let you know as I'm quite sure it's possible. Actually - if I stream to chromecast via Chrome (browser) I still get audio coming from my pc-connected headphones. Use chrome to browse to your video file (type c:\whatever in the url bar). You might need the chromecast addon for Chrome. Quite sure the same happened by default with Plex.

 

[CamiKaze]

Running a VGA cable over 15m should suffice.
Model of Vivitek Proj?

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Err if the speakers are in odd places and people are only hearing one or two of them at a time the worst thing to do will be running surround sound... Some people will hear only the dialog, others the effects and others just the music. Surround sound is designed to work when speakers and people are in optimum positions to widen the sound stage by sending different sound to different speakers exactly the opposite of what you need in this situation

You want all the sound going to all the speakers so everyone can hear it, mono preferably but stereo at worst. There's a reason large live productions all use mono...

EDIT: and after a google I see the system you're using is just a standard home/PC setup, 5.1 will not work on this in a larger room with people not sitting correctly. A properly encoded 5.1 file would send almost all dialog through that centre speaker

 

[CamiKaze]

Err if the speakers are in odd places and people are only hearing one or two of them at a time the worst thing to do will be running surround sound... Some people will hear only the dialog, others the effects and others just the music.

You want all the sound going to all the speakers so everyone can hear it, mono preferably but stereo at worst.

Plus it's probably sub woofers since he has a cafe/bar?

 

[southafricanrob]

Running a VGA cable over 15m should suffice.
Model of Vivitek Proj?

Qumi Q5

 

[southafricanrob]

Err if the speakers are in odd places and people are only hearing one or two of them at a time the worst thing to do will be running surround sound... Some people will hear only the dialog, others the effects and others just the music. Surround sound is designed to work when speakers and people are in optimum positions to widen the sound stage by sending different sound to different speakers exactly the opposite of what you need in this situation

You want all the sound going to all the speakers so everyone can hear it, mono preferably but stereo at worst. There's a reason large live productions all use mono...

EDIT: and after a google I see the system you're using is just a standard home/PC setup, 5.1 will not work on this in a larger room with people not sitting correctly. A properly encoded 5.1 file would send almost all dialog through that centre speaker

Aha, seems completely counter intuative but I see your point.... We have 30 ppl sitting fairly tightly in front of the screen (and the center speaker) and the rest of the speakers are in roughly the correct place..

Will give the VGA cable and the mono/stereo options a try and see which works best

 

[insect]

Get a DVI - HDMI converter and rather use a 10m HDMI cable (should give a sharper slightly better image as opposed to the VGA cable with signal degradation over that distance). They are like R29 from takealot.



You can select on the pc which audio device to use, so if you want to use the sound card to play the audio in 5.1 to the speakers and the display to output to the projector that would work fine.

 

[CamiKaze]

HDMI and mini composite inputs

Along with a 24-pin universal I/O VGA/component input and a mini audio output for connecting a host of A/V components. USB port supports an optional Wi-Fi dongle (not included) for wireless operation.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/vivitek...-red/8753466.p?id=1218890756196&skuId=8753466

I see it supports a USB port with 4GB internal storage.
Ever use the USB port before? Is there a media player app that came with the projector?
From the link above, it says that the USB port is used for a WIFI dongle. Do you have this dongle?

 

[southafricanrob]

Get a DVI - HDMI converter and rather use a 10m HDMI cable (should give a sharper slightly better image as opposed to the VGA cable with signal degradation over that distance). They are like R29 from takealot.

View attachment 303126

You can select on the pc which audio device to use, so if you want to use the sound card to play the audio in 5.1 to the speakers and the display to output to the projector that would work fine.

Thanks all - turns out the above works great - 15m HDMI cable and the quality of the pic looks really good. Incidentally though - I tried different audio options as mentioned above and in the end 5.1 sounds way better - I guess it depends on each case and the audio track of the particular video - but in this case the voice was quite lost if stereo or mono to each speaker.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Thanks all - turns out the above works great - 15m HDMI cable and the quality of the pic looks really good. Incidentally though - I tried different audio options as mentioned above and in the end 5.1 sounds way better - I guess it depends on each case and the audio track of the particular video - but in this case the voice was quite lost if stereo or mono to each speaker.

Glad you got sorted