Why not surround sound

[gumdigger]

Hi
I have put together a HTPC on which i have onboard(Asus P5K PRO Motherboard) audio, iam using its spdiff out to connect to my amp. I have connected TV using 3.5mm to 2 rca by using the green socket on the back panel of the motherboard because it only needs left and right channel audio.

now its ok when i play 2 channel stuff like mp3s through pc, it sounds good but when there is something multichannel played through the pc like i played a movie with dts track, i could only hear the music no vocals. In the Realtek Sound Manager -> Audio IO -> i have selected 6CH speaker option because i have 2 fronts 1 center 2 surrounds and 1 sub connected to my amp.

please tell me where i am going wrong. do i have to play around with ac3config.exe?

 

[allargon]

What software you using for multichannel playback?

My experience is that onboard multichannel audio options suck. I've found that even $20 5.1 cards do a better job than the ones on $500 motherboards. That said, I also currently have a RealTek (their left and rights are reversed) on my motherboard. I've had multichannel play with the test tones of the RealTek driver. Have you verified that it works with the RealTek Sound Manager test tones?

 

[MDS]

In the Realtek Sound Manager -> Audio IO -> i have selected 6CH speaker option because i have 2 fronts 1 center 2 surrounds and 1 sub connected to my amp.

That's for the analog outs and you only have 2 channels connected to the TV, not the receiver.

 

[gumdigger]

What software you using for multichannel playback?

My experience is that onboard multichannel audio options suck. I've found that even $20 5.1 cards do a better job than the ones on $500 motherboards. That said, I also currently have a RealTek (their left and rights are reversed) on my motherboard. I've had multichannel play with the test tones of the RealTek driver. Have you verified that it works with the RealTek Sound Manager test tones?

I will be getting a seperate sound card but not yet. the onboard one at the moment is ALC883 it doesnt have the DTS Interactive option in the manager. i played with the test tone and the surround demo of the buzzy bee but when the bee travels behind the head there is no sound. and if i individually click on each speaker for the tone, i can only hear tone in front left and right. no tone comes out of sub,surr,center.

 

[gumdigger]

That's for the analog outs and you only have 2 channels connected to the TV, not the receiver.

Ohk, so ur saying the amount of speakers i choose there is only for analog out(in my case i should choose 2 ch? because analog front left right going to tv?.
and spdiff out is a straight pass through to the amp, the amp decides how many channels are comming through and it decodes it on that basis?

 

[sparky77]

Try installing spdifer and leaving the settings the way you had them, it should link your playback software to the spdif output on your soundcard so the reciever can properly decode it. I've come across several soundcards that had to be set to 5.1 in order for all of the channels to be passed through the spdif connection.

You can download it here.

http://ac3filter.net/projects/spdifer