Does SPDIF support 5.1 surround sound?

[Isendar]

Awhile back I decided it would be wickedly cool to connect my home theater's Samsung 5.1 Surround Sound system to my computer. Since HDMI is not possible with the type of sound system (and I don't think the gpu can accept a sound signal anyways) I connected it via the SPDIF connection on my motherboard's sound-card. The sound was rich and loud but no surround sound. I got everything working except the rear and center speakers. If I can recall correctly, the subwoofer was working as well as the left and right front speakers. My main question is: Does SPDIF support more than 2.1 speakers (My motherboard isn't much older than 3 year so the sound card is capable of a 7.1 solution)? How would I go about enabling this option since windows controls my sound options (Vista)?

[glo]

Yes, SPDIF can support DTS and DD.

What sound card do you have? Also keep in mind that running surround on an integrated sound card will increase your cpu load.

[Isendar]

SoundMAX 200B, I believe. My CPU (i7 920) runs under 5% load even while playing World of Warcraft so i'm not too concerned...

Or more specifically:

ADI® AD2000B 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
- Support Jack-Detection, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking
- Coaxial / Optical S/PDIF out ports at back I/O

[Deleted]

Awhile back I decided it would be wickedly cool to connect my home theater's Samsung 5.1 Surround Sound system to my computer. Since HDMI is not possible with the type of sound system (and I don't think the gpu can accept a sound signal anyways) I connected it via the SPDIF connection on my motherboard's sound-card. The sound was rich and loud but no surround sound. I got everything working except the rear and center speakers. If I can recall correctly, the subwoofer was working as well as the left and right front speakers. My main question is: Does SPDIF support more than 2.1 speakers (My motherboard isn't much older than 3 year so the sound card is capable of a 7.1 solution)? How would I go about enabling this option since windows controls my sound options (Vista)?

SPDIF does indeed support surround sound via DTS or similar encoding, but Windows itself doesn't know how to encode sound to such. So, you can only get surround sound over SPDIF in applications that themselves know how to output DTS or you buy a card with support for that. For example VLC - player does have support for true surround over SPDIF, but almost no games do. The only sound card that I am aware of that comes with drivers for doing DTS-output over SPDIF in all applications and games is the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (ie. the most ass-hat expensive one of them) that I have on my desktop.

So basically you're out of luck unless you find the same card somewhere.. :/

---------- Post added 2011-10-04 at 10:46 AM ----------

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...-spdif-windows says the same thing as I do, but there's mentioned a few other cards that can do DTS encoding for all applications and games.

[Isendar]

Ah thanks for that. No worries, I was planning on getting a *real* sound card eventually. Just wanted to see if I could save some money b4 I did. I'll fiddle with it a bit when I get home from work just to be sure. I was hoping to get some crazy sound from BF:3 when it is released. I'll check the BF:3 beta settings and see if they implemented DTS output. I just remember how insane it was running my 5.1 samsung system while playing MW:2 on my PS3. My landlord thought a real war had landed in her backyard!