Windows 7 Surround Sound and High Definition Video

This page provides advice, links to resources, sample sounds, high-definition videos and guides to help you show off the capabilities of your Windows 7 surround sound system. Unless you have a great collection of Dolby digitally encoded DVDs or some of the more recent Dolby encoded PC games, 3D surround-sound samples are generally hard to come by, but not now.

Microsoft spend an awful lot of marketing energy on lauding Windows 7′s Media Centre, however Media Centre is only available in the Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows 7. You don’t need Media Centre. It’s slick, yes, but it isn’t essential. Everything you need to enjoy full blown high definition video and three-dimensional audio is supported out of the box in all editions of Windows 7, provided you have the right hardware.

Index

What you don’t need
What you do need
Recommended Download
Sample Sound and Video Clips
Setting up Windows 7 for High Definition Audio and Video

What you don’t need

For starters you don’t need any specialised software. Most machines these days, with the exception of el-cheapo laptops, have the right hardware built in.

You also don’t need Microsoft to tell you that you need a “complete Windows PC enhanced for home entertainment and powered by Windows Media Center”.

What you do need

You need to have the right hardware. To play 1080p video and have surround sound you will need equipment with at least these specifications:

1.8 GHz Intel Core Duo, an equivalent AMD processor, or higher, or a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4, an AMD equivalent or higher processor
512MB of RAM
128 MB video memory
DVD drive
1920 x 1440 screen resolution
- You can get away with a 1024 x 768 resolution but you won’t get 1080p high definition video, only 720p
- Some older Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) displays will give you full high definition resolution at 1080p
  - Check the specifications if you have a CRT
- Most plasma and Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) units offer 1080p
- Light Emitting Diode (LED) displays are actually LCDs. The only real difference between an LED display and an LCD display is that the back-lighting in an LCD comes from fluorescent tubes and in an LED display the backlighting is provided by a series of LEDs.
24-bit multi-channel sound built-in or on a separate card
Surround sound speaker system (either 5.1 or 7.1)
- If you want to feel drumbeats in your bones and nerves then a separate surround sound system with a high-powered amplifier and speakers ought to do the trick

Recommended Download

Cole Williams’ freeware Cole2k Advanced Codec Pack allows Windows Media Player (WMP) to play a very wide range of video and audio formats that it doesn’t support out of the box. You can go to the Cole2K website and find the download link yourself (Happy hunting!) or you can click here for a direct download. Normally kadaitcha.cx doesn’t do direct download links because it smacks of bandwidth theft but the cole2k front page is a bit too busy with lots of text and the download link is not so easily found. To compensate cole2k.net for that, if they had a “Click here to give beer” link then kadaitcha.cx would ask you to consider donating a beer to Cole, but the site doesn’t have such a link, so you need to be told that sites like cole2k.net can only provide you the free services that they do by relying on advertising income, which is only earned if someone clicks on an advertisement.

Sample Sound and Video Clips

From Microsoft

Microsoft offer a few sound samples that you can download here. If you click these next four links the music will be played in WMP. If you want to save the samples for future replay, right-click and save as…

Latin – 5.1 Surround Sound WMP
World Beat – 5.1 Surround Sound WMP
New Orleans – 5.1 Surround Sound WMP
Pop Rock – 5.1 Surround Sound WMP

Microsoft also have a great selection of 720p and 1080p video clips. The 1080p clips are encoded to 24 frames per second at 1920 x 1080 resolution and can really show off your HD audio-visual system. You will need a broadband connection because the clips are quite large:

Many more samples are available from Microsoft. You’ll find the clips in Microsoft’s WMV HD Content Showcase. It’s worth a visit if you want some clips to demonstrate your system’s audio and video capabilities.

From Kelly Industries

Kelly Industries creates digital audio software plug-ins for Dolby Pro Logic and the 5.1/7.1 speaker format.

Their website is well worth a visit. You will find guides on how to listen to Dolby Digital Audio, S/PDIF, discreet channel 5.1 surround sound and how best to position your sound equipment. There are several hundred MB’s of compressed Dolby Pro Logic II downloads on the same page. The files are offered in AC-3, WAV and DTS format. You will find a few Real Audio format files as well. And if you have Adobe Premiere Pro, you have to see this.

From virtualworlds.de

You’ll find a small number of samples at Virtual Worlds Productions. TheWar.mp3 is worth the trouble to download if you want a new and distinct ringtone for your mobile or cell phone.

Warning: Nuclear-blast-proof protection is required before visiting Virtual Worlds Productions.

From Bjorn Lynne – Crème de la Crème

So, you want to hear some fine music in true 3D surround sound? Visit Bjorn Lynne’s website. Bjorn is the musician who composed all the background music for the amazingly popular Worms series of games.

You’ll find a 5.1 Surround Test File to check that your speakers are set up correctly, There are also seven 5.1 mix tracks; Voyager, Secret World, Starfield, The Fairy Woods, Jooli’s Song, Signals and Sun Willow. Bjorn’s free clue for you is that the WMA files sound better than the AC3 encoded files. Unfortunately not all of his mixes are in WMA. Bjorn’s surround sound mixes are here.

Other things you’ll find on Bjorn’s site are a very extensive collection of Midi files here, a good selection of MP3 files here, and even some ringtones here.

From Digital Audio Systems

There are only a very few AC3 encoded files on the Digital Audio Systems website but it is an amazing resource for audiophiles with sample sounds of all kinds.

If you like to brag about how good your sound system is, download the garage1.mp3 in the Hi-Fi section. kadaitcha.cx strongly recommends that you check up on both your household and medical insurance before you turn up the volume to anywhere near full click. This sound clip will most certainly damage crappy speakers. The optimal volume for the sound clip can is when the speaker sounds as if he’s 6 feet away. The clip ‘is an especially stringent test of the dynamic range and low-bass capabilities of your system.’

You have been warned, but heck, it sounds great on quality gear.

DAS recommends you visit your local sound store and play the clip through a typical sound-reinforcement speaker to get an idea of what it should actually sound like. “That visceral drumbeat which makes your eardrums close up in shock — that’s what it should sound like. Now go home and listen to it through your own system. Are you disappointed?” The site also includes A binaural recording of “Amazing Grace” played as one might hear at a funeral procession in New Orleans, from AudioStax’s “The Space Sound CD: Dummy Head Recording.” The idea of binaural recordings is to reproduce a realistic soundstage by placing the microphones inside a “dummy head”, then listening to the recording through headphones.”

As an aside, if you want sound to appear as if it’s right inside your head, try a web search for bone conducting headphones. kadaitcha.cx uses the AudioBone brand, they’re brilliant, especially for those who have severe hearing problems but still have a good inner ear.

The main audiophile resource at Digital Audio systems is here, there’s a whole stack of movie clips here with the audio recoded to higher standards, and there are Dolby Digital sample files here.

From Diationis

The Diationis website has some great audio files. The DTS AC3 page here has a free DVD-audio ISO image that you can download and burn. There’s also a few free DTS and AC3 (Dolby) files there too. You will find some free MP3 files here as well.

There is a page here that lists a series of ambient videos that you can download for free. The resolution is only 720×480, but you can get Diatonis’ higher resolution ambient videos for a whole dollar apiece here.

Setting up Windows 7 for High Definition Audio and Video

Getting Windows setup for high definition audio is very straightforward and Microsoft provide a wide range of guides. A small number of the guides were written for Vista and haven’t been updated for Windows 7, however Windows 7 is just a fixed-up Vista with a few things moved around to keep you guessing so all of these guides can be used for Windows 7:

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Tags: Dolby, High Definition, Surround Sound, Windows 7

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