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Hi Folks please can someone help regarding digital audio output on my MB. The Audio device is Realtek hd audio, plugged into my A/V receiver via optical toslink lead. I have a 7.1 speaker setup. My receiver detects a digital audio signal, as I have tested movies. But if I try and play RE2 remake. I just get stereo output. No Dolby digital surround or Dolby Atmos.

But however if I play audio through my nvidia gpu everything works as it should. GPU is also connected to A/V receiver via HDMI. RE2 remake works in dolby atmos and digital.

I have DTS and Dolby Digital checked in supported formats for reaktek HD audio.

Dolby Access setup only is for output via HDMI in order to get dolby Atmos which My GPU has.

Has anyone had a similar problem and what steps did you take to fix it. I have a creative labs ZxR sound card which I used first but it only supports 5.1 audio and does not support Dolby Atmos. Just dolby digital live or DTS.

I have downloaded dolby digital plus which is NOT officially signed. I have not installed it. Plus I still don't think it will give me what I am looking for. I would have thought the sound output would have been just as good as my GPU sound if not better.

Please Advise
 
Soldato
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SPDIF has a fraction of the bandwidth available to HDMI, enough to support 2 channel stereo PCM or DD/DTS. You need to use Dolby digital Live or DTS Interactive if you want multichannel audio from games as there are virtually no games out there on the PC that can output native DD/DTS.

multichannel PCM over HDMI is superior in every way. Use that.
 
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Thanks James for your reply. It just seems really weird to me that there is no sound card that has hdmi. I cannot believe that, I can get better sound out of my GPU than I can out of my MB and dedicated sound card combined. So even if I brought a soundcard which supports 7.1 speaker setup, unless it has HDMI, I am not going to get Dolby Atmos.
 
Soldato
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There is, or was - the Xonar HDAV. But it was a passthrough card, meaning it needed a cable from the gpu to the soundcard, then another cable from the soundcard to your amp. It made sence at the time because the sound processors on GPUs were not as advanced but they caught up quickly and why bother with a passthrough soundcard when you can bundle it all on the GPU?

Soundcards still have their uses, but i think the best use case for dedicated cards these days is 2 channel stereo gaming when you want to make uses of their advanced position audio trickery, or music production. For everything else, HDMI will give you atmos for thos games that support it and lossless PCM (LPCM) will server everything else.

So even if I brought a soundcard which supports 7.1 speaker setup, unless it has HDMI, I am not going to get Dolby Atmos.
Correct :)
 
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