Integrated Audio Problems!

[INM8]

Ok, well iv just recently got an Asus A8N Premium to go with a new pc I am building for myself. Iv also got some creative 5600 speakers which have their only dolby digital\dts decoder. They have coaxial and optical inputs. I have hooked them up to the coaxial output on the A8N premium and are having some strange problems. If I play a dvd, the dolby didital signal gets passed thorugh and decoded by the 5600's just fine, if I play music i get stero sound fine too, but for some reason when I play games, i only get two channel sounds.

I noticed that before when I was playing fable and the sound kept patching on and of depending on which way I posisioned myself. This is obviously the 5.1 taking effect, but NOTHING is coming out of the speakers. Iv ran a hardwear test on the speakers, and played games through my xbox in 5.1 so it is definatly not a problem with the speakers. Iv set all the settings right in windows sound properties, and also in the realtek ALC850 sound effect manager.

Is this a limit of the cheap*** ALC850 codec? If anyone knows how to fix this please drop a post... Maybe I should just put the spare Audigy I have laying around in. Only reason I havent done that already is because I wanted to use my front audio ports.

INM8

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

The only way to get 5.1 through digital is if something is encoded for DD or DTS.

Games are not.

Movies are.

If you need to go through digital, you have to use a sound device that can encode DD in real time. There are some cards out that will do this (like the HDA/Bluegears X-Mystique or the Turtlebeach Montego) as well as some integrated solutions (Soundstorm and some newer Intel HD audio solutions).

Stereo through digital is the best you're going to get from anything other than those products.

Audigy cards will also not do this. If you have a spare audigy, use it in analog mode.

 

[INM8]

hmmm great....guess ill be back to using the audigy for now. Anyone figured on how to hookup front headphone jacks to an audigy card?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

There are some ways of doing it I think... nothing official afaik, but it's been mentioned and linked to a few times. Connecing audigy cards to front panels comes up every week or so around here. You might be able to find something in a search.