Best way to get 5.1 from my PC to reciever?

So you may have seen my earlier post, I now have a Denon AVR 1912 AV receiver.

I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but I had bought the cables I thought I needed. However, I bought an optical (toslink) to get audio from my PC to the receiver. After some reading i've discovered that my sound card (Asus Xonar DG) doesn't do the dolby/DTS stuff needed to output anything more than 2 channels over optical (It only does PCM).

If I bought a DVI to HDMI cable and connected the s/pdif cable from my graphics card to the sound card (it has a header for it), would this allow me to do 5.1 PCM? If this works would it be the best option or is there something else I could do?

Thanks for your help.

"It only does PCM" PCM is better than Dolby/DTS....not HD audio though (dolby true hd and dts hd): Nothing beats that.

Only giving you two channels though is bad. Upgrade the card?

"It only does PCM" PCM is better than Dolby/DTS....not HD audio though (dolby true hd and dts hd): Nothing beats that.

Only giving you two channels though is bad. Upgrade the card?

ydnarrewop

I was hoping to fix this without buying a new soundcard or spending a lot of money. Does anyone know if my HDMI idea will work since HDMI has enough bandwidth to send 7.1 PCM?

I think the best way is digital tos cable. I don't think it really matter what card you have since your receiver does the work if your going digital. I guess the card may matter for the software it supports. Other then that it doesn't matter. I guess hdmi would work don't know how good sound is from a video card.

If your receiver says DD on it then it's doing 5.1.

What motherboard do you have? Both my motherboards support Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. I run an optical S/PDIF to my receiver and HDMI to my monitor without any issues and full digital decoding. Note also that you only need Dolby Digital Live if you are watching content not originally created in 5.1 or 7.1; it encodes a digital surround signal on the fly from 2.0 channel audio, so if you're only watching DVDs and/or Blu-Ray, it's not necessary. If you're playing video games, though, that's another story! ;) BozBozanimal

Motherboard is an Asus M4N 78. I doubt it has better options than my Xonar. I'm using an optical toslink and getting stereo PCM no problem, it's just because of cable bandwidth it is limited to stereo when it comes to PCM.

It's interesting that you meantion Dolby Digital Live, because from what I've read online that's what I need to get 5.1 from games. I haven't tried any games yet, i think the xonar can pass through dolby digital, DTS and WMA pro. What do games tend to use? The reciever can easily turn 2.0 into 5.1 with Prologic etc but I want proper 5.1 in my games.

Thanks for your help.

It's interesting that you meantion Dolby Digital Live, because from what I've read online that's what I need to get 5.1 from games. I haven't tried any games yet, i think the xonar can pass through dolby digital, DTS and WMA pro. What do games tend to use?kraken2109

Going back and rereading your issues, I'm not sure why you'd use an optical cable - or your sound card, for that matter - at all. Run the HDMI cable from your video card to the receiver, and then a second HDMI cable from the receiver to your monitor (using a DVI connector at the monitor if necessary). This should get you your surround sound and video support, if I'm not mistaken.Bozanimal

PC games generally don't have pre-encoded audio at all, for obvious reasons. There may be a few where the game engine's sound middleware supports it without any need for sound card features, but those cases are few and far between. The choice to use Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect just depends on what your receiver can decode. [QUOTE="Bozanimal"]Going back and rereading your issues, I'm not sure why you'd use an optical cable - or your sound card, for that matter - at all. Run the HDMI cable from your video card to the receiver, and then a second HDMI cable from the receiver to your monitor (using a DVI connector at the monitor if necessary). This should get you your surround sound and video support, if I'm not mistaken.NamelessPlayer

If I use it with my soundcard (which has ASUS GX gaming stuff) I think it can do all the EAX stuff.

No HDMI but it has an SPDIF header?

BozBozanimal

It has the header but DVI out. I'd assume it wouldn't have the cable and header if it couldn't send audio down a DVI to HDMI cable.

Does anyone know if using the header from the sound card to graphics card and using a DVI to HDMI cable from PC to receiver will give me multi channel PCM?

Planning on buying this cable for it, one of the reviews says he got sound from it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Data%C2%AE-Quality-Copper-Oxygen/dp/B0039OF91Y/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

If I use it with my soundcard (which has ASUS GX gaming stuff) I think it can do all the EAX stuff.kraken2109

In this case you will need an audio chipset that supports it via a new motherboard or audio card, but there are lots of mobos and cards that support one or the other, with HT and Creative going the Dolby route and Asus going the DTS route.Bozanimal

I basically have 2 choices as I see it.

1. Spend £50 on a Xonar DX for DDL

2. Save up and upgrade my GPU

I might just stick to stereo for a while and get a new gpu.

[QUOTE="Bozanimal"]Maybe I missed it, but how does a new GPU solve your issue? Even with "real" HDMI it's not going to give you DDL or DTS Connect, so you'll still only get multichannel audio from DVDs, which you would get anyway with your current HDMI setup. I R confused.NamelessPlayer

And I guess you're right about TrueHD/MasterAudio. 7.1 PCM would probably be too big. They are still lossless though, just compressed lossless.