Asus p5ld2 optical out surround problems.

[steeven_steeven]

Hey all. Heres my setup.

Asus p5ld2 using the onboard sound which is a Realtek ALC882 connected to a yamaha 5.1 surround system through an optical spdif connection.

The problem is I'm only getting stereo out of the optical connection. I tried messing with the settings and I'm still not get my rears, center, and subwoofer sounds. Only the front right and front left are playing.

I tried updating my drivers and everything. Any help?

[shadowdr]

Are you using the drivers from Asus?
I have an older mobo that has onboard sound and must use an AC,97 driver package that recognizes all ports. A program called soundman must be installed to see more then just the left and right audio.

[steeven_steeven]

Yes I am using all the latest drivers and software.

The audio device is a Realtek ALC882

[steeven_steeven]

I think I may of figured this out. While doing research I found that most spdif output connections are stereo only on most sound cards because they can't decode and encode a 5.1 signal or something like that.

Then I found out about this pass-through thing where the dts or dolby digital signal just goes straight out the spdif without being touched by the audio processor. It's hard for me to explain when I don't know the proper names for half of these things.

So now I can play dvds and files with 5.1. Some of it took some configuring though. For example FFDshow I had to set AC3 and DTS on spdif so those programs aren't decoding anything.

[nightelph]

Yep, thats how it works. DVDs and Blu-ray movies (pre-encoded 6-channel audio) can be sent over s/pdif but you won't get that from music and games. You can use three headphone jack connections to achieve it, but then its analog, if I'm not mistaken.