5.1 Home Theater Gaming

[gregghawes]

I have googled around and haven't really found any recent answers to my problem and hope that some pro can guide me.

I have a Maximus V formula motherboard, a gtx690 gpu and a pioneer vsx-821 receiver. I would like to sometimes play some games on my tv but cant seem to get the 5.1 surround sound to work, I can get it to work when watching vlc player but just not on games. I have an spdif cable connected from my motherboard's built in sound card to the receiver.

Do I need to buy a sound card? If so which is the best one I can get? or is there another way to get 5.1 with software or something?

 

[gamerk316]

SPDIF can carry three formats:

2.1 PCM
5.1 Dolby
5.1 DTS

Games do not use Dolby or DTS, so unless you have a soundcard with support for encoding to one of those formats, SPDIF is limited to 2.1 in games. You get 5.1 when watching movies through VLC because movies do have a Dolby or DTS audio track.

If your receiver supports HDMI input, then you might be better of using that.

 

[gregghawes]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Oh right I understand now. The only problem is my card doesn't have a hdmi out, it has 3 dvi and 1 mini display port.

I tried using a dvi-> hdmi adapter then running a hdmi cable to the receiver. This showed the picture fine but when I go into windows sounds it says not plugged in.

If using an adapter does it need to be dual-link? When looking at my adapter it appears to be single link.

One more thing if I can use an adapter, would I get 5.1 through a mini display port to hdmi adapter? My 3 dvi slots are already taken so would be cool if I could buy 1 of those and not have to change all the connections everytime I want to play on the tv.

 

[gregghawes]

So now I have managed to get sound to work using the dvi->hdmi adapter that came with my old 6970 card and using a different slot on my 690. The problem is the sound is only stereo. I tried both Bf3 and mohw with the home theater audio options turned on but still no 5.1.

Is this because I only have a single link dvi->hdmi adapter?