i may be purchasing a sound card with optical out soon so i'm curious what kind of stuff takes advantage of the 5.1+ sound. also is there any other advantage to having the optical out?
yea..you can use the optical out to plug it into a hometheater decoder and have a hometheater somebody showed me all this once i asked a similar question one time.
Movies will have 5.1 sound and most games will have 4-point surround. A few games may even have 5.1 surround, although ultimately it's really the same as 4ps if the speakers are set up properly.
In terms of pure audio, there are some recordings done in 5.1, mostly from the classical or jazz genres.
the optical out is used to connect the soundcard (your pc) to an external decoder - such as a receiver or a standalone digital decoder.
the use of a decoder - decodes imprinted digital audio formats such as dts and dolby 5.1 from movie files (dvd) and sends them to your multispeaker setup.
Theoretically yes, but it depends partially on the quality of the decoder. Undoubtedly, with digital signal the signal will be better and with optical you also negate the possibility of outside inteference; however, you have to decide whether the onboard decoder on your sound card is better than the decoder on the receiver.
Linear Mode
