How do I hook up my computer to my 5.1 receiver?

Question

Hi! I hooked up my computer to my 5.1 surround sound receiver via S/pdif optical cable, but i'm not getting "true" surround sound! The sound is playing out of all of my speakers just fine, but my receiver is only recognizing my front two speakers, and so it's "pretending" to play it as surround sound by guessing what each speaker should play.

I set my audio card to 6CH speaker but that didn't help.

I would appreciate any answers anyone could give me!

Answer 1

I would check the following

1) Does the source have a 5.1 track on it

2) Does the sound card recognize Dolby Digital and dts tracks

3) Is it set to output as PCM instead of bitstream, which would limit it to 2-channels