Optical surround sound

Hey guys.

Recently built a new pc with an IP35-Pro motherboard with an optical out. So Ive hooked it up to my Samsung surround amp, the same one I use for my TV and 360, and it sounds absolutly fantastic, films sound way better than they do even on my 360.

However, no games support optical surround sound, even if you set it to 5.1 it dosnt sound proper. Take CoD4 for instance, if I set it to 5.1 in the ingame options, it does have surround sound like the 360 version, proper speaker splitting, but its way off center and sounds wrong. Basically the front aint the front, it sounds like the speakers are getting confused.

But it does split it for like films, perfectly, just playing a DVD through Windows Media.

I know what the problem is, all games are still geared up to the old "1 jack per channel" creative type surround speakers. Nobody seems to support optical yet.

If I shove it in forced 5.1 on my amp but leave it on 2 speaker in games, it does split it to an extent, but it still dosnt sound like proper speaker seperation, the back 2 speakers seem joined and some sounds you expect to be coming from the rears (ie stuff behind you ingame, like an explosion) still come out of the front.

Any ideas for any sort of emulation software to trick my sound into thinking its going through the jacks?

And no, the software that came with it dosnt help and I have the very latest drivers.

Many thanks in advance.

Merx

I am pretty sure most PC games still use EAX for multi speakers systems. Unfortunetly receivers (at least all the ones i have seen) does not support EAX, so the best your are going to get is a Dolby Pro Logic style sound. And as far as I know, there is no fix for this, the only way your are going to get true surround sound out of your PC games, that I know of, is to use PC speakers since your sound care is built to decode EAX. The only time your are going to get true surround out of games is if they actually support Dolby Digital.

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