ps4 optical through pc surround setup

[Confusedcasefanswitchguy]

What I want to do, is get surround sound from my ps4 through optical cable into my pc which has a surround setup plugged into the motherboard.

I got a startech external soundcard which had spdif in and out in addition to 7.1 outputs i didn't care about, but when I got it and tried to use it it listed the spdif in as 'currently unavailable'.

What I need to know is if what I wanted to do was just not possible with a cheap external sound card, or if what I was trying to do would not even be possible with a much more expensive internal sound card equipped with optical input.

 

[GuybrushT2]

I am doing exactly what you attempted with my PS3 and a Claro Halo sound card, which has spdif in. I'm not familiar with the startech card you have, but mine works fine. Have you checked all the software settings on your sound driver? You mentioned your speakers are hooked to the motherboard. You can only have one active sound driver, so perhaps your PC is looking at mobo sound and no the sound card. I would route everything through the sound card and try again.

 

[Confusedcasefanswitchguy]

Ahhhhh... yes this was probably the problem. I've already returned it, but I bet that was it. Like how you can't use the mob video out ports if you're using a graphics card, I was trying to take in with one audio device and put out with amother. Thanks, that makes me more confident that if I want to do this an internal sound card would do this if everything was running through it.

The external thing I got was for occasional use, I wouldn't want to have to hook all the outputs into it just to use it even if it did work so no regrets about returning it.