Will this sound card play 5.1 surround sound?

[soldier5637]

Hello

I've installed this card in my computer in the hopes of playing 5.1 surround sound on my home theater system, But i got the optical cable to connect the card and the home theater system and only the front left and right speakers have sound.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132052
Can i change this some how? if not, is there a DIRT cheap card i can get that will that plays through optical? (MUST HAVE OPTICAL OUT)

Thanks

 

[MKBL]

Verify the setting on both the sound card output and the receiver input. The sound card output may have been set as stereo, instead of 5.1. Or it can be possible the particular source on the receiver has been set as stereo.

 

[gamerk316]

Hello

I've installed this card in my computer in the hopes of playing 5.1 surround sound on my home theater system, But i got the optical cable to connect the card and the home theater system and only the front left and right speakers have sound.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132052
Can i change this some how? if not, is there a DIRT cheap card i can get that will that plays through optical? (MUST HAVE OPTICAL OUT)

Thanks

Here's the problem: SPDIF can only carry thre formats:

1: Uncompressed 2.1
2: Dolby Digital
3: DTS

Most PC audio does NOT use Dolby or DTS, using uncompressed audio streams in almost all cases. So to get 5.1 over SPDIF, you have to encode an uncompressed 5.1 audio stream to either Dolby or DTS OR have a pre-existing Dolby/DTS audio stream (Movies, for instance, have one of these audio tracks).

The DGX, while having an SPDIF output, does NOT have the necessary hardware to encode to Dolby or DTS.

http://event.asus.com/multimedia/xonar/find.htm

You can get "simulated" 5.1 using Dolby Headphone, which does a very good job of virtualizing a 5.1 audio field onto a 2.0 output.

The cheapest card that will output 5.1 via SPDIF is the ASUS Xonar DS(X), which has the technology to encode to DTS (Not Dolby, which may be a pain as Dolby is more supported. Make sure your equipment supports DTS if you go this route. The cheapest card that can do Dolby is the DX).