Surround sound from computer?

[Odesseiron]

Fairly simple question here I think, for the PC/Audio buffs. So I have a fairly decent home theater for my room, and everything is hooked up to it minus my PC.

My current audio card does not had an optical out. It's a pretty cheap asus model. My Video card does have HDMI, but can that bring sound to my receiver? I'm not quite sure.

I'm willing to plop down some dough ($75ish I guess?) To get a good sound card with an optical out to hook up to the receiver. Is that my only option? I've googled the subject and it gives me 5 options, but I'm not sure if I'm getting true surround with any of them.

Input/feedback anyone?

[Isiolia]

Most cards with HDMI can output sound to a receiver if you have one that supports it. You might need to update the driver (usually a Realtek of some kind) in order to get more than basic 2-channel audio. If you're already using that to run your PC into the system, then that'd be the logical route IMO.
Technically, if you have that, you don't actually need a sound card - provided you always listen to your PC through your receiver (or use other devices with built in DACs, like USB headphones).

Keep in mind too that in order to get true surround sound, your source (software, audio track, whatever) needs to actually be a surround track.

You may have a digital out option as it is - maybe not optical, but it's not uncommon to have a port that is (or can be) digital audio out. If your receiver has a coax digital (usually an orange RCA jack), then a mono (or stereo) 1/8" jack to RCA cable could provide digital sound that way too.

Do you have the Xonar DS or something? That has a header to pipe audio through HDMI (if your GPU has that), or it has the option to toggle one of the jacks to digital out. It'll encode any 3D audio to a DTS surround signal, expanding what will actually give you surround sound.

[Ramor]

I'm not super up to date on things lately, but as far as what I can remember HDMI (high def multimedia interface if i recall) does transmit at least up to 5 channels (HDMI 1.0 anyway, not sure about more recent updates) but I believe running your audio through an HDMI cable should be fine. If you're curious as to how it would work out I'd recommend just testing it with an HDMI cable first as they're a bit cheaper than a new soundcard, but overall I'd say a new soundcard would probably give you better results all around, especially for only about 50~75$ that you'd have to drop on one, of course you'd also have to deal with the extra cabling involved in going optical rather than an HDMI output.

Might as well try it with an HDMI cable first I suppose is my main point.

[Odesseiron]

Thanks both of you for the replies. Yeah Isiolia, my GPU is a GTX 480 SC. It has the HDMI out, but it requires the um.. don't want to sound technically inclined here, but the smaller than normal HDMI port. The card came with one, but it's not nearly long enough to reach the receiver on the other side of the room.

I have a Xonar DS also. It's really basic. How would I go about piping the audio through HDMI? I'm pretty good with actually hooking stuff up once I know what to do (or a basic outline) and have all the parts/cables I need. I'm sure I'd need some kind of adapter and cables.

If you guys can point me in the right direction as far as what I need. From what you say Isiolia, I can go either route. I'm mostly just looking to get surround out of my games/movies I DL.

[Isiolia]

Your card has an internal S/PDIF header on it that, if your card also has an internal header, you can run between them. However, the GTX 480 doesn't do that AFAIK, it supports 7.1 channel audio directly from the card - probably just need to change output device to HDMI, which will bypass your Xonar entirely. On the nVidia side, the 480 was the first generation that had internal processing for HDMI audio, I think, so the internal connection is probably more for earlier cards.

From what I can see on my system, I've got AMD HDMI Output, and then an entry for Speakers on ASUS Xonar DX, and one for S/PDIF Pass-Through on ASUS Xonar DX...so I'd assume you'd just pick the pass-through if you hooked it up that way. No first-hand experience there.

If it's just the cable, you can get a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter for a couple bucks, or possibly just use a longer cable (a 15' one on Monoprice is about $5...sadly that's the longest they seem to offer for mini HDMI to HDMI).