Hey guys,
I finally got around to building my first gaming PC and I am slightly confused when it comes to audio. I have a set of Turtle Beach XP500's from my Xbox days and I planned on using them on my PC via optical. According to Turtle Beach's website, these are not officially PC compatible and will only output stereo unless a sound card with Dolby Digital Live is installed. They claim the reason for this is that multi-channel audio of games can not be sent through the single optical connection.
My question: How do you get surround sound out of a PC? My motherboard (ASRock Z87 Extreme4) has the Realtek on-board codec that supports 7.1, but it looks like when I connect my XP 500's (Stereo headset with Dolby 5.1 Pro Logic IIx) I will only get stereo output. This confuses me since when I used them with my Xbox 360 I would use the same digital optical connection and get the simulated 5.1 surround.
So, do I need to install a sound card to get surround sound with this headset? What if I were to use a surround sound speaker system, would I also need a sound card? Any insight as to why the Xbox can use the single optical port to deliver surround to the headset but my motherboard can't would be great. It is also worth noting that Turtle Beach offers true PC compatible headsets that can output surround sound with just drivers, no card required. Any idea why those can but mine can't?
Thank you in advance for any help, and sorry for the long post.
I finally got around to building my first gaming PC and I am slightly confused when it comes to audio. I have a set of Turtle Beach XP500's from my Xbox days and I planned on using them on my PC via optical. According to Turtle Beach's website, these are not officially PC compatible and will only output stereo unless a sound card with Dolby Digital Live is installed. They claim the reason for this is that multi-channel audio of games can not be sent through the single optical connection.
My question: How do you get surround sound out of a PC? My motherboard (ASRock Z87 Extreme4) has the Realtek on-board codec that supports 7.1, but it looks like when I connect my XP 500's (Stereo headset with Dolby 5.1 Pro Logic IIx) I will only get stereo output. This confuses me since when I used them with my Xbox 360 I would use the same digital optical connection and get the simulated 5.1 surround.
So, do I need to install a sound card to get surround sound with this headset? What if I were to use a surround sound speaker system, would I also need a sound card? Any insight as to why the Xbox can use the single optical port to deliver surround to the headset but my motherboard can't would be great. It is also worth noting that Turtle Beach offers true PC compatible headsets that can output surround sound with just drivers, no card required. Any idea why those can but mine can't?
Thank you in advance for any help, and sorry for the long post.
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