5.1 Surround Sound optical or analog?

SniperGuy

So I have these: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=z-5500&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=15919973460513787852&sa=X&ei=EuPkTu2kKIPGtgfChfH6BA&ved=0CD0Q8wIwAA

I've been using an optical cable to go from my PC (gigabyte USB3 motherboard) and the Realtek onboard sound to go straight to the receiver for the speakers. This works fine for movies and such but I just realized, having owned these speakers for quite a while, that I'm not actually getting 5.1 from games. My googling research shows that perhaps I need the analog 6 channel cable. My motherboard has spots for that so I could do that, with the green/black/orange cables, but I'd have to order one as I can't find the one that came with it years ago. This is all very confusing to me. Do I absolutely need the analog for 5.1 gaming? Is there just some setting I'm missing to let me do it over the optical cable?

edit: In fact, now that I'm looking, I can't find a place to purchase a replacement analog cable.

Casually Hardcore

a lot of onboard sound thingy have 6.1 analog out and 2.0 optical out. Backwards, I know, but that's the price of not having to get a soundcard.

SniperGuy

Yeah that's bizarre. I imagine there's a reason for it but audio is a dark and scary place in the computer world for me. I'm seeing that I may be able to just get 3 standard 3.5mm male to male plugs and use those. Anyone speak as to whether that would work or not?

edit: Three of these: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021812&p_id=5576&seq=1&format=2

Cabezone

Most games do not sent out a digital 5.1 so you will ant the analog for gaming. Those speakers should have come with the proper cables for it.

But yeah, those would be the proper replacements. I'd get longer than 3ft tho.

Nova_C

Most sound cards don't have a digital five channel encoder. The issue is that after sound processing the signal is in analog format. It needs to then be encoded to digital to go over the optical line. So they encode it in two channel because it's cheap to make the sound processors that way. :P Movies on DVD and Blu-Ray don't have this problem because it's already digitally encoded. The sound card just passes it right through.

If you want digital 5 channel, you'll need to find a sound card with Dolby Digital Live encoding, such as Creative's X-Fi Titanium. After living with the 2 channel digital for a year, I bought an X-Fi and holy shit does it make a difference having a discrete sound processor in your computer.

Also, real time mixer hardware makes the audio so much richer.

But anyway, that would be the reason. :P

SniperGuy

Well in the future perhaps I'll throw a sound card in there. I used to have an Audigy 2 but it's sorta old at this point and the onboard sound has been plenty good enough for me thus far. So yeah I'll be ordering some cables for now it seems. Thanks!

emp123

If you contact Logitech they may send you the cables for free, they sometimes do crazy things like that.