Real surround sound support

[neumatho]

This has taken from issue #49

Hi @Raph99-Thanys,

I'm just wondering how your audio setup is. Do you use a receiver which can take 5.1 Jacks and if yes, what the name of that receiver. I was thinking of adding real surround support if I can find a receiver. My currently receiver only have stereo input, but support the old Prologic surround format.

-Thomas

Answer from @Raph99-Thanys:

Hi, i'm using a 5.1 System from Creative, an OLLLDDD! one...
This one: "Creative Labs T6300 5.1" (https://www.1fodiscount.com/p122968-enceintes-creative-labs-t6300-51/)
Directly plugged on my "realteack" sound system from my mother board, with 2.5 jacks (MB = MSI MAG B660 Mortar)
it's a Physical 5.1 System

[neumatho]

Thanks for your answer.

It seems only new receivers take HDMI or optical cable as input. I have googled a lot the last couple of days to get some more information. It seems optical cable only takes stereo input, unless you encode the signal as either Dolby or DTS and that cost money unless you have a soundcard which can do it on the fly.

Then there are the HDMI option left, but it seems there are a lot of people which can get it to work probably in Windows (can only select 2 channels and not surround), but some can get it to work. So I guess it depends on which receiver you have. But if it works, you should be able to send the surround as PCM (no encoding) to the receiver.

My plans will be to support sample files with more than 2 channels + make modules that uses surround to use real surround instead of the old Prologic Dolby standard (as an option). But I will not have time to do it the near future, since I have a lot on my todo list so far, which I want to do first.

But if anyone sees this and have some suggestions on which receiver to use, setup solutions etc., you're welcome to join this discussion.

-Thomas