Xbox 360 Surround Sound Set Up Help?

Question

I have recently purchased the Durabrand 5.1 Home Theatre Speaker System; but have had trouble setting it up. Okay, on the sub woofer, you have all the necessary ports for the 5 speakers and also 6 input ports, these are FL, SL, CEN, FR, SR and SW. I am trying to connect this to my Xbox 360 which I am using the RCA cables that came with it, the colours of these are, yellow (for video), red (for right), white (for left), blue (unsure its purpose), green (unsure) and another red (unsure). Please could someone tell me which RCA cable should go in which input slot, or if this is not the case, suggest an alternative method (if necessary.) Finally on the actual sub woofer there are two settings, CD/MP3 and AC-3 which one should I have it on for surround sound on the Xbox? Thank you

Answer 1

First, the Durabrand 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System does not do surround sound.  It's literally just a set of speakers.

It will work for STEREO sound, such as from the red/white audio cables from your 360, but that isn't the same as surround sound.

You'll need a receiver that can do Dolby Digital.  I quickly found this one from Walmart:  http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.d...

In particular, you need something with an optical audio input or as it's also known as, TOSLink.  You'll need to purchase a separate optical audio cable and connect your 360 to the receiver.  The optical audio port is on the connector you plug into the 360.  (yes, it's weird.)

You will then take the Durabrand speakers and connect them to the receiver directly, instead of connecting them to the subwoofer.

This will give you true surround for those things that support it, like DVD movies and games.

As for the 360 cable, the set of green, blue and red (not an audio cable!) are a set of component video cables, used for connecting the 360 to a HDTV.  If you don't have a HDTV, you can just use the yellow video cable.  The red and white audio cables can connect to your speakers right now, but as I said, you'll only get stereo sound from them (the rear two speakers won't do anything at all.)  This will be better than your TV's speakers to be sure, but is nothing like true surround sound.