Yes, It's a 5.1 PC Problem!

[Teepea]

I have been racking my brain for hours now going through countless threads on this site and around the internet in general. I decided to make my own thread to get an answer specific to my own equipment and situation, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm trying to get 5.1 Surround working on my receiver from my PC. I'll start off with my equipment, beginning with my PC.

Motherboard
MSI Gaming 970 (No onboard HDMI, only optical and 3.5mm inputs, but I'm focused on the optical in this case)

GPU
AMD RX 470 8GB (Two HDMI Outs)

TV
Samsung Plasma (Model Number PN50B550T2F; 4 HDMI In and an Optical Out)

Receiver

LG Blu-Ray HTIB (Model Number BH6420P; HDMI Out, Optical In)

Right now I have HDMI from my GPU to my TV via HDMI, and then Optical Out from my mobo to the receiver In. I have Dolby Digital and DTS encoding enabled and it works when I test it in the sound panel, but playing games there's only 5.1 "Stereo", for lack of a better explanation. I was playing Dead Space and there was an audio option for 5.1, so I selected it and went into the speaker test. Selecting Front Left test would emit sound from both front and rear left speakers; Center would play sound through all speakers; Front Right through Front and Rear Right speakers.

Is it possible for me to get 5.1 with my current set up?

Without an HDMI In on my receiver, is doing a passthrough from GPU to TV HDMI In to TV Optical Out to Receiver Optical In and getting 5.1 impossible?

Is a sound card a solution?

Should I abandon all technology and live in the forest?

 

[jsmithepa]

Your game is sending you stereo only, and you want to take this 2-channels and play on all 6 speakers. In an honest-to-God receiver, one would select a codec (mode) for this to happen, and a receiver would have several of these and you pick one that sound more pleasing to you. In a PC, is often more limited, it's your job then to find out what MODE your sound control panel offers you, this maybe in the game's menu itself, some of it may sound weird to you. A soundcard typically gives you more options but I wouldn't be able to guarantee you anything, I don't use soundcard, I have a full-blown AV Receiver.