basic PC + 5.1/7.1 receiver questions

[hughJ]

I own an X-Fi soundcard and would like to use a receiver to power my speakers (paradigm titans+atoms.)

From what I gather, I require the analog outputs from my soundcard in order to have >2.1 in non-DD/DTS situations. From the little looking I've done, most receivers have a 5.1 analog input for SACD/DVD-A - would these be the inputs one would use for 5.1 analog from a PC?

What of 7.1 analog? Would one have to rely on the receiver to create the extra channels from a 5.1 source? Are (typical/budget) receivers capable of somehow combining different analog inputs to receive+output a full 7.1 analog from a single source (say, the 5.1 analog for DVD-A, and 2 more from "CD"/"VCR"/"AUX"/etc) ? Never used a receiver before, so I don't know quite how programmable/flexible they are in that regard.

 

[jcPanny]

Sound card to receiver

Hugh,
Your best bet is to use a digital optical or coax connection from the X-fi sound card to the receiver. You may need this adapter if you have the X-fi Music card:
http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=16&product=1780

This way, the receiver will handle the Dolby or DTS decoding, bass management, D/A conversion, etc. For 2 channel stereo, however, the D/As on the sound card are probably better than most entry level receivers.

 

[hughJ]

You can't get more than stereo over the digital out on X-Fi, unless it's an encoded DD/DTS stream. EAX and your standard positional 3d sound created from the computer aren't encoded, so they need to have discrete digital/analog outputs to the receiver. The X-Fi's only means of outputting discrete channels is via analog outputs, so aside from having an external encoder to feed the receiver (analog->digital->analog), the analog inputs on the receiver are the only option.