Calibrating the speakers for a Home Theater sys

Question

I started a similar thread in the PCMCIA forum but there seems to be a lot more traffic here... The question is: how do you deal with speaker calibration when your card is connected to a Home Theater system?
If you calibrate the speakers with the card, don't you send a "modified" source into your HT? And then, if you calibrate the speakers again in the HT system, don't you end up compounding the effect?
In other words, the question could be: How do you make the card appear "neutral" to the HT system, like a DVD player would?
Thanks!

Answer 1

<SPAN>Aha; just before I go, I have just found the following in one of the Creative sticky messages at the top of the forum (<FONT color=#333333>Digital Connections, SPDIF and Dolby Digital Info ) which explains the digital connection stuff much better than I did; confirms that for dvd movies, using the digital out bypasses the card's internal meddling. Still ask Letropaks or Keene re the correct cable however. This solves your movie problem, outputting the same signal as a DVD player would to your amp, with minimal loss of signal quality. So get ready to throw away those nasty analogue cables...
<SPAN>
<SPAN>
<SPAN>Movies wth Dolby Digital (AC3) & DTS<SPAN>
<SPAN>Movies on DVD often use encoded audio in the form of Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS. This means that all 6 channels are compressed into a single stream of digital data. A decoder is required to extract the channels and send the sound to the correct speakers. There are three ways to do this.
<SPAN>
<SPAN>
<SPAN>)<EM><SPAN> Pass the AC3/DTS signal to a external decoder</EM>.
<SPAN>
<SPAN>This is where your optical/coax connection is used. To go down this route, you must first have a set of speakers or a decoder that supports Dolby Digital. In your DVD software, select 'SPDIF' as the audio output method and 'SPDIF Pass-through' in your soundcard options. What this does is tells both the software and soundcard to leave the audio from the DVD in compressed form and send it straight through the digital outputs. Your digital speakers/receiver will do all the decoding to give you full surround sound. Please note that this is the only way to get 6 channels through an optical/coax cable.
<SPAN>