Optical SPDIF/Out And Rear Speakers ?

[gargoyle67]

I've just Got a Audio Extreme 5.1 Sound Card For My Cube Pc,
And My Question Is When I Use My Optical SPDIF out I can only get 3 speakers going left/right And Centre but no rear channel with my yammaha amp. It say's in the manual that SPDIF Out only works with 2 speakers.
Is this the case or is there some way i can use SPDIF out and get rear speakers going ?

Thanks.

[bugster]

Please do not cross post. One topic is enough

/Moderator bugster

[Suntan]

If your receiver support PLII or some sort of DSP that will take a 2 channel signal and feed it to the surrounds you can use that. Normally for my ripped moives I just convert the 5.1 AC3 audio stream to a 2 channel PLII vorbis stream and use PLII on my receiver to play it back. For good movies (read: action movies) I keep the AC3 stream and output that to the receiver, which decodes it as the true dolby digital signal and outputs it discretely to each of the 6 channels.

To do this you first need a file with an AC3 5.1 audio track (either just the audio or a video with the audio) you will also need AC3filter. Set its speaker output to spdif and then play the file with a player like zoomplayer. If all works right your receiver should recognize the dolby digital feed and switch over to DD.

Make sure your sound card drivers are set to something like "AC3 passthrough" though (check your soundcard instruction for passing Dolby Digital (aka AC3) as some are different. Otherwise your soundcard will decode the AC3 then send the front 2 channels through the spdif as a PCM signal.

-Suntan

[Brent212]

What about a DVD with a DTS 5.1 channel soundtrack? If I have a soundcard with an SPDIF optical output connected to a receiver that decodes DTS and DD 5.1, can I get the DTS stream to the receiver if I'm playing the DVD on my computer's DVD drive, using something like Power DVD?

[Suntan]

Yes I believe you can, but I only keep the AC3 track as the DTS track is normally too big. If I want the DTS I just go down to the basement and watch the DVD.

Also, I believe that libDTS is available from Gabest (VLC) that allows for DTS playback from directshow players (like zoomplayer) but I haven't had the need to try it.

-Suntan