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Game Surround Sound

N

NaughtyGeek

Golden Member
I recently put together what I feel to be a relatively competent HT/Gaming pc. I used an MSI NEO4 Ultra motherboard, an A64 3500 proc., 2 Gb of Patriot LL memory, a Haupauge MCE500 tuner for analog tv and a Dvico Fusion 5 Gold for digital TV all connected to a Westinghouse 37" LCD through a Sapphire X1900XTX video card running at 1920 x 1080. I have used both the optical and coax digital audio output to my Onkyo receiver but I only get surround sound from movies. No matter what settings I mess with (system, media center, media player, in game) I cannot get games to output in surround. Tomb Raider Legends and HL2 Episode One are the most notable titles I have tried. Can someone please tell me what I'm missing here. I was running under the thought that the sound should be piped directly over the digital line and my receiver should be doing the decoding. Even though these games are advertised as Dolby, are they outputting something else? Any help or explanation someone could give me would be most appreciated.
 
Ohhh boy, you just discovered a horrible gaming secret.

Very few sound cards have the ability to ENCODE audio into DD 5.1.
The only reason you get digital 5.1 from movies is because the sound card passes the movie data (AC3 I think) straight out to the fiber optic or digital coax connection.
But in games the audio cant be surround 5.1 unless its analog.
Actually 3 analog stereo connections. 1 for the front stereo, 1 for the rear stereo and 1 for the center/sub. If you check your soundcard you will likely notice a bunch of colored plugs. You need the black, orange and green for surround in games.

UNLESS you buy a soundcard that will realtime encode DD 5.1. But Soundblasters and most others dont do that.

IF you decide to go the analog surround method, you will need to uncheck Digital Output Only in your sound properties.
 
Originally posted by: archcommus
Is there any reason NOT to use analog connections?
Click to expand...

SQ can't be as good. Otherwise using decent PC speakers (of which there are quite a few that are pretty good when considering gaming) and the analog connections are perfectly acceptable for gaming. For those that desire to use expensive home theater setups to really shake the house when playing games, it leaves something to be desired.
 
Well, depending on the opamps and other analog circuitry one can argue that analog connections are better than transfering the same audio over a compressed Dolby Digital or DTS stream via an SPDIF connection (whether that's coaxial or optical). Then again, one can also argue that the audio coming out of your computer is originally digital anyway - and often compressed in some form or another to begin with, so you're not really losing anything by packaging it in DD or DTS for transport to the receiver. Along those same lines you could also argue that you have less chance for error because there's only one ADC or DAC in the chain at that point (depending on if your receiver is completely digital or not).
 
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