200$ Surround Sound for PS4 + PC?

And here I thought I had bolded all the "compressed" and "encoded" words to explain why orangpelupa can't just simply send 6 non-encoded channels through TOSLINK, all while avoiding subjective listening comparisons between either methods.

Oh wait, I did! Yay for me.

 

No way the op cant use analog ?

 

He said it was a "Sony 650 Home Theatre", which through google leads me to this.
It's an old DVD Player +Speakers combo where the only inputs are a TOSLINK for digital and two RCAs for analog.
http://pdf.crse.com/manuals/4465268112.pdf

 

But since the audio is in stereo, what kind of upmix do you want? I think cloning the front speaker to the rear speaker is a good enough solution. I don't know if the multi mode do it like that or something else. What is your setting for the upmix?

 

what's the difference between expand stereo to surround and multi setting on the DVD? Is it doing something different than just cloning the front to the rear?

 

I just read the spec of Sony DVD home theatre and it only support Dolby Pro Logic and not Pro Logic II, which is really what you want. It should be much better than Pro Logic, and yes, receivers should have it.

Of course it might support Pro Logic II and the spec on Sony site is wrong. Anyway, Pro Logic should be used for content that is encoded with Pro Logic in mind (basically old movies where the master is 4 channel FL/FR/C/R and encoded to stereo to be decoded with Pro Logic). Pro Logic II can take any stereo source and expand it to 5.1.

So to answer your original question.... receiver (with Dolby Pro Logic II) should do much better at upmixing a stereo to 5.1 than your DVD home theatre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Pro_Logic

As to why it didn't include Pro Logic II... probably licensing fees and cost saving a bit by not having a Pro Logic II decoder, since DVD home theater obviously a budget product.

On their low end BD HT, they didn't have Pro Logic II, but the do have DTS Neo 6 which can upmix stereo to surround.

 

I don't know if it has custom matrix, but on the Pioneer receiver (even their cheapest one) you have center width, dimension, panorama, and center image. Basically you can widen the surround effect, making the sound felt distant, fuller sound, and more focused center sound. Probably similar to the expand thing on ffdshow.
Edit: these setting is specifically for either Pro Logic 2 or DTS Neo when up mixing from stereo.

 

The latest version of J River Media Center implements a virtual audio device that you can set as your default sound device in Windows. This audio device allows for all sound on the PC to be routed through JRMC's audio pipeline which includes a DSP engine capable of (among many other things) upmixing stereo to multichannel and encoding to Dolby Digital. The software's not cheap, but there's a free demo if you want to mess with it.

Edit: And here are the specific details of the feature.

 

You're right but I do get annoyed by 128K MP3 or even AAC (which is like a better version of MP3 rather than a really great codec), I have a video with 96K vorbis that sucks too. 192 Kbps MP3 music may sound compressed.

By coincidence, S/PDIF has about the sweet-spot bitrate for compressed surround audio.

 

Using analog would be just as good : uncompressed and un-encoded.
The only things a HDMI receiver does better is multiple inputs (PC and console) and probably that troublesome upmixing of stereo sound (it does have the function, right? also perhaps a receiver can do it while taking analog audio from PC and hdmi from console or dvd player, I don't know)

I'm pretty much sold on the idea you should use a receiver for surround sound.
The biggest problem I'd have with that if they're somehow meant to be these big-ass oversized things, even bigger than a VCR

 

It's 50 bucks...

 

You would just need the Windows-only version (and you can install it on as many PCs as you own) @ $49.98 ( about 650000 rupiah). The Master license is for those who need it on more than one platform. May still be high if you only want it for that one feature.