Realtek spdif out - no surround?

[phildo77]

I've done some searching and I can't seem to find an answer to my issue. I'm using Realtek SPDIF out (optical) on a ASROCK P67 EXTREME4 GEN3 to a Dolby receiver and I'm not getting surround. Only 2.1. How do I get 5.1 (or better)?

[Alan Phipps]

TC's elderly DirectSound and EAX do not work properly with Vista or Win7 despite working in XP. Probably the best surround you can get with RealTek and TC with those OSs is to go into the RealTek control console and select quadraphonic speaker layout and also check the 'fill speakers' box if you have one.

[phildo77]

Digital out does not have the 5.1 speaker options and My realtek console doesn't show multi speaker options. When I do test for Dolby Digital I hear audio through all 5.1 speakers. But I'm only hearing 2.1 through TC. Does TC support 5.1 or 4.1 out through realtek spdif digital out?

EDIT: I'm using win 7 BTW.

[Alan Phipps]

TC uses the now obsolescent DirectSound and EAX audio output format developed for XP and before, while Vista/Win7 supports OpenAL audio format and supports neither of the above properly without an intervening software emulator similar to AMD's ALchemy or the 'Realtek 3D SoundBack'.

To see the speaker layout options I believe you have to enable the Speakers device in Device Manager and probably connect your 5.1 system to the analogue Speaker outputs on the mobo. I would guess that you would not want to do that just for TC when your other probably newer OpenAL games work just fine.