Audio Trouble

[ohwell78]

Ive installed the driver from the msi website and I have audio out of my front 3 speakers. However nothing from my surrounds. Its specifically when i play games such as hald life 2 or doom 3 i notice. The output is a digital optical into a reciever.

I truly belive the problem is driver related and not from the reciver or other set up.

Any Help would be aprreciated.

 

[ohwell78]

Does anyone else use this board? and if so what audio driver and setup are you running.

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: ohwell78
Ive installed the driver from the msi website and I have audio out of my front 3 speakers. However nothing from my surrounds. Its specifically when i play games such as hald life 2 or doom 3 i notice. The output is a digital optical into a reciever.

I truly belive the problem is driver related and not from the reciver or other set up.

Any Help would be aprreciated.

That is normal. The mobo sound does not encode sound into digital surround, so it only passes the PCM signal (Just front left and right) to the receiver which will play left, right and mix both to the center speaker. To get full surround, you'll need to wire up all the mobo analog jacks to the receiver's 7.1 analog in.

EDIT: THe only time you'll get all the speakers producing sound with the mobo optical or coaxial port is if you 'pass-through' a DVD's sound, then the receiver gets a Dolby Digital or DTS bitpath and converts the signal to surround sound.

 

[ohwell78]

So despite using the optical out it will only do the 3 channels?

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: ohwell78
So despite using the optical out it will only do the 3 channels?

Yes. The digital out only passes on what the mobo sends it. The Realtek audio codec chip cannot encode analog surround into a Dolby Digital Live bitpath. If you need that, look for the Blue Gears X-Mystique card. It can encode into DDL for playing games in surround on a receiver using a digital out connection.