Motherboard sound via HDMI, and are 5 speakers much better than 4?

[bigonroad]

Hi there,

I'm planning on building a new PC soon, with an ASUS H81M-PLUS motherboard.

I currently use an external USB DAC into my seperates system for sound - and its great. But I use a 2 channel amp with two sets of speakers wired up in parallel. It sounds fantastic for music, but for stuff like films and games it loses a lot of directional data - because its still just a 2 channel setup.

So I'm planning on getting a 5.1 surround amp, and then running the sound in through that - but I'm not very up to date with digital audio.

1. What is the best option?

• Optical Out
• HDMI Out
• USB DAC

Are modern motherboards better shielded, and presumeably digital outputs less effected by noise? My old PC, with a DP43TF motherboard, gave awful sound on the analog outputs, hence using the DAC.

2. If I use HDMI, will I be able to use the onboard sound HDMI output at the same time as using an standalone graphics card (960 GTX) for my graphics? If I have to use the graphics card output, will it still be routed through the motherboard sound circuits?

3. Finally, is it worth upgrading to 5 channel and getting a center speaker? Does anyone there use a 4 channel setup for gaming here - with decent speaker positioning, is the lack of a center speaker even that noticeable?

Thanks for the help!
Chris

 

[Bishoff]

If you're going 5.1, then use HDMI as your audio connect from the pc to the receiver for the best sound available. Optical won't do 5.1 for a lot of things, like games and lacks the codecs pass-through. You'll want to have a center speaker for a proper 5.1 setup for games & movies. When using HDMI, you're bypassing the sound card completely, as this is a raw audio signal. You don't use the onboard/sound card at all for this.