Surround Sound help needed

[mikewl]

I have been trying for awhile now to figure out what is needed for 5.1 sound for my pc and am rather confused.

I have a DVD/Surround Sound setup which has an optical port for external devices such as 360 etc, however when connecting my PC to it with an optical lead from my USB Soundblaster Audigy 2 NX the most I can seem to get is Pro Logic II, even on all the speaker tests it either misses out the rear samples or just plays them through the front speakers.

Also in the Creative Software setup where you select the number of speakers you have I can select 5.1 but not when I have the Digital Only option ticked, when thats ticked it always reverts to 2 Speakers and when, either way the 5.1 option I do have does not seem to work.

Im really not sure how to get this working, wish it was as simple as hooking up a 360

[EvilBoris]

It tends to be that it will only switch to 5.1 if you are using a 5.1 source i.e. playing a DVD on the PC or playing a game with 5.1 sound.

You just get stereo PLII most of the time

[sj33]

Creative sound cards can only output sound 'as-is' over digital, meaning you will only get 2.0 unless the source is a 5.1 DD/DTS track.
Anything fancy such as the upmixing for music, EAX for games etc will only work over the analogue.
This is obviously a critical flaw, though I would argue the X-Fi sounds stunning over analogue.

If you wish to have proper 5.1 support over digital, upmixing your Mp3's to 5.1 and everything, you need to buy a sound card that has Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect. The best card is the HDA Xplosion, though do be aware non-Creative cards only support EAX up to 2.0.