No True 5.1 for Gaming, is this right? HELP!

[equalibriate]

Hi there,
I have recently built a pc system, for the first time, to game on. I partly wanted the P5Q Deluxe b/c it had a digital optical out from the onboard sound card that i could plug straight into my Marantz A/V amp (supports both DTS&DD). I have used this A/V setup with a 360 for many years and thought the same would be got from a PC.
I noticed that I wasn't getting any surround signals when playing PC games so questioned if there were the correct encoders/card ability for this, then i realised i was getting surround from dvds.
Now after doing a bit of research it appears that no games actually put out true 5.1 signals (on either PC or console) but only use DDL or DTSI to take a stereo signal and turn it into untrue 5.1. I would really appreiciate any info on this as i find it hard to believe that some of the 360 games Ive played in the past were not in true 5.1. How can DTSI/DDL proactively mix sounds to the correct directions from the players perspective(behind), if there is only a stereo signal?
And if games only ever put out stereo signals how can some claim to have surround?
Any info with regards to this will help me out no end, thanks.

 

[equalibriate]

Cheers for the help then ppl ;-{
Guess il go ask at guru3d!

 

[Kilo669]

I'm not too familiar with gaming audio on consoles but on PCs and from my personal experience, I've always been able true x.1 channel sound. First person shooters were a primary factor for me to have such a setup. The only problem is you're stuck with analog in order to use it. There's no way for the sound apl in games to tell the receiver which channel its going to. It instead processes each channel as independent stereo/mono channels....center, front l-r, rear r-l, which are exactly the analog connectors on the sound card. If you plan on hooking it up to a system with a receiver you'll need a cable and connectors that correspond to that as well....you're out of luck with digital coaxial/optical.

 

[Morik]

So i was thinking to have 5.1 audio on games using a creative x-fi titanium from optical digital out to my Sony receiver. So if i buy the card ill get same audio as if i connect my onboard stereo to receiver?

 

[becky]

I'm not too familiar with gaming audio on consoles but on PCs and from my personal experience, I've always been able true x.1 channel sound. First person shooters were a primary factor for me to have such a setup. The only problem is you're stuck with analog in order to use it. There's no way for the sound apl in games to tell the receiver which channel its going to. It instead processes each channel as independent stereo/mono channels....center, front l-r, rear r-l, which are exactly the analog connectors on the sound card. If you plan on hooking it up to a system with a receiver you'll need a cable and connectors that correspond to that as well....you're out of luck with digital coaxial/optical.

not true.
you can use optical/coaxial output (better known as S/PDIF) but your sound card/motherboard has to support "Dolby Digital Live". This technology allows you to encode any multichannel audio source to a 5.1 Dolby Digital signal, so that your external Dolby Digital decoder can read the audio stream (dts has an equal technology called "DTS connect").

Now after doing a bit of research it appears that no games actually put out true 5.1 signals (on either PC or console) but only use DDL or DTSI to take a stereo signal and turn it into untrue 5.1

yes, it's true that no pc games put out a 5.1 dolby digital audio stream. but the pc games have, for example, 6 audio out channels (2 rear, 2 front, 1 sub, 1 center). the pc game only says: "here are my 6 audio out channels, so do what ever you like with them".
the sound card takes them and does one of the following with the 6 audio channels:
-) it uses a DAC to get an analogue audio stream and puts out this audio stream through the 3 analogue audio outputs
-) it uses "Dolby Digital Live" to create a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio stream and routes this stream to a S/PDIF output, so that an external decoder can work with this Dolby Digital signal.

So Dolby Digital Live doesn't mean that the audio source has to be in stereo. If the audio source is a 6 channel source, then Dolby Digital Live will make 5.1 sound out of it, so that you get REAL surround sound.
By the way the X-Box 360 games put out REAL surround sound, cause the source isn't just a stereo signal.

I noticed that I wasn't getting any surround signals when playing PC games so questioned if there were the correct encoders/card ability for this, then i realised i was getting surround from dvds.

you didn't get surround sound in games because your motherboard doesn't support Dolby Digital Live.
The S/PDIF outputs on motherboards (in your case an optical) usually pass through whatever the source signal is. On a DVD you have a premade Dolby Digital audio source so you don't have to use Dolby Digital Live because the source is already a 5.1 Dolby Digital signal. When the DVD puts out Dolby Digital audio the motherboard just passes through the Dolby Digital signal without modifying it. As a result your external decoder gets the Dolby Digital audio from the DVD and is now able to decode this audio stream. So you can use your onboard S/PDIF connector to watch DVDs in 5.1 when you're using an external decoder.

I hope I could help you a bit.