Stereo or full 5.1 with spdif output

[Ken]

I have an Asus A8N motherboard and I want to connect up a set of Logitech
5.1 speakers via the spdif socket.

Does the SPdif support full 5.1 surround or just regular Stereo?

I only ask because when I connect it up, the logitech speaker control centre
says that it is stereo feed and gives no options for 5.1

Thanks very much for any help

 

[BananaOfTheNight]

Does the SPdif support full 5.1 surround or just regular Stereo?

Stereo, unless you have a DVD and set your DVD player to 'SP/DIF
Passthrough'

I only ask because when I connect it up, the logitech speaker control centre
says that it is stereo feed and gives no options for 5.1

Sadly, you will only ever see that in NForce 2 motherboards that have
SoundStorm (eg. Asus A7N8X, Abit NF7-S)

 

[Roland Scheidegger]

Stereo, unless you have a DVD and set your DVD player to 'SP/DIF
Passthrough'

Sad, but true :-(.

Sadly, you will only ever see that in NForce 2 motherboards that have
SoundStorm (eg. Asus A7N8X, Abit NF7-S)

That's not quite true. Some new motherboards (all intel-chipset based,
afaik) can do this too (it's called "Dolby Digital Live"), for instance
the asus P5AD2 Premium. If I'm not mistaken, this is a 100% software
solution, but it probably won't take too many cpu cycles.
That other boards can't do it has no technical reasons, this is due to
licensing issues.

Roland

 

[BananaOfTheNight]

That's not quite true. Some new motherboards (all intel-chipset based,

afaik) can do this too (it's called "Dolby Digital Live"), for instance
the asus P5AD2 Premium. If I'm not mistaken, this is a 100% software
solution, but it probably won't take too many cpu cycles.

Real-time DD5.1 is back? Uber-sweet...though I'm an AMD-64 convert.