Help me output 5.1 sound thru reciever

Your integrated audio will sound "good", but not great. How much of an audio stickler are you? Would you settle for "good" or do you want great? Or awesome?

From my personal experience and taste, I chose the Auzentech Prelude. Analogue output is superb, plus gives you all the environmental effects the Creative cards give you for games. I'm still not happy 100% with audio support in Vista though.

I gave up on Creative. Creative's poor drivers, plus them cracking down on an individual trying to improve them on his own dime, then releasing a sound card as an X-Fi sound card when it is not (false advertising). Up to you if you want Creative or not. I'm sure others here can chime in with other suggestions.

So, stick with the integrated audio if it satisfies you. If you are looking for "better" (subjectively), then consider an add-in card.

You can game in 5.1 over digital spdif if you have a sound card that supports dolby digital live. Beats having to run all those analog cables. I don't know of any comparison between sound quality. I'm sure google could help. w/o DDL, you're stuck w/ stereo, which is definitely inferior.

I have a Bluegears B-Enspirer card w/ DDL support, and I like it a lot. Auzentech Prelude has this feature, and is probably the card I would buy right now, although it costs more than mine.

I have a sound blaster X-fi Platinum, and will be going analog 5.1 to my receiver. I wanted to have the latest EAX settings and my computer will be right by the receiver so going analog doesn't bother me.

Analog 5.1 connection implies 3 x 3.5mm to stereo RCA cables going to the receiver. This isn't what is needed to get only EAX, this is what is needed to get surround sound if you don't have a card with DDLive or DTS Connect to use a digital connection. I'm not sure about the newest games, but a lot of games use EAX which is typically a feature of Creative sound cards but a few other brands support it too.


You receiver has an analog 5.1 multi-channel input right? (It does according to Sony website). By using this with the 3 x 3.5mm to stereo RCA cables you will get 5.1 surround sound. ProLogic and any features like that do not apply to the analog multi-channel inputs. With this connection, all your receiver is doing is amplifying the signal and sending it out to the speakers. The sound card is doing all the processing.

DDLive takes the 5.1 analog data and encodes it into a AC3 digital bitstream. Your receiver then has to decode it before playback can occur.

With analog connections no encode (PC) / decode (Receiver) processing is required, and sound quality is in theory going to be better (AC3 is a lossy compression system).

Having said all that, I have a PC with DDLive and I find the sound quality to be excellent. I'm not an audiophile, but quite frankly, I can notice no "latency" (from the encode/decode process) and the quality to my ears seems just as good as the analog feed. Considering the convenience of running just a single SPDIF (coax) cable then I vote DDLive as the way to go. (or DTS connect).

Onle last thing. I have found one big problem with mutli-channel gaming over a receiver (DDLive or multichannel analog): No Bass to the subwoofer. The only way I can get a signal to my sub is to run 2 channel analog with dolby pro-logic 2 enabled. Then the bass comes thundering back. The thing is, I know this is not a setup problem, because test tones from the setup manager indicate the sub-woofer is properly receiving an audio-stream. It just seems that games don't generate a discrete bass channel. I'm willing to loose the bass for the joy of true multi-channel though.