Some quick background, have 5.1 surround system, Onkyo TX-SR606 receiver. I just bought a HT Omega Striker 7.1 for my HTPC.

Generally it sounds great, but whenever I play any stereo media, my sound card uses DTS Interactive and DTS Neo:PC to simulate 7.1 surround. This sounds almost amazing, except there's noticeable shifts in dynamics in the surround speakers. My guess is one of the following is happening:


DTS Neo:PC was designed for 7.1, not 5.1 like Neo:6. I only have 5.1 channels and it doesn't know this so I'm losing two channels and as the codec shifts the music to those channels the sound level drops. I would think it could do 5.1 as well automatically and intelligently though
DTS Neo:PC just isn't that great at figuring out how to play music and such nicely over 5.1 and is changing its mind on whether to pump stuff out of the surround speakers, causing the dynamics to change a bunch.


For the several second periods in which the surrounds aren't getting suddenly louder or quieter, the fake-surround sounds amazing. I'd like to keep using it as it has the potential to sound much better than just broadcasting out of the 5 channels evenly, or just using the fronts for regular stereo.

Any suggestions? Anyone have similar problems with upconverting stereo to 5.1? Thanks.