Do I need a newer amp to play surround sound?

[darsunt]

I am running sound for my htpc to an old sony integrated amp, and it sounds good. But all the speakers sound the same. I am running from the stereo output of the pc to the video input of the amp.

Like I said, it is an old amp with no S/PDIF input. Probably in the day they had no dolby or dts audio format. The audio chipset on my mobo is real tek alc888 and it has S/PDIF output.

I'm thinking with a newer integrated amp I could plug my htpc with in with a S/PDIF cable and play 5.1 surround with no problem. Is this true?

Thanks

 

[jinjuku]

Your computer is spitting out an encoded stream that the destination will have to decode and then play.

You simply need a receiver or pre-processor that has the surround sound formats you desire. You will not find this in an integrated amp.