been around in a small circle, several times now, gave up on onboard realtek and purchased a turtle beach Catalina touted to deliver 5.1.. Not. My next purchase will be ammunition... lol The foundation of my HTPC is an ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe, featuring optical/coax SPDIF out. My goal is to interface that unit with my Marantz audio/video sr870, through the matched Marantz digital processor DP870 with optical/coax input. The realtek app features a SPDIF output, but all I get is the front. No center,surround or sub, regardless of speaker config in the app. (although I did hear an attempt at "virtual" 5.1 in the test app with the front L and R pronouncing "center", giving a vague aproximation of center.But the center itself was silent.) I am not struggling to achive "virtual", I have the correct hardware for the real thing. The system also has a matched Marantz DVD player, and when employed, delivers the real thing, but from the HTPC, front only, music or DVD, even with windvd that has multi channel support. the TB Catalina features SPDIF in, and out, optical. Again, I get front only. And yes, I removed the realtek drivers, and disabled the onboard in CMOS prior to installing the Catalina. I have ensured the latest drivers for both (realtek and turtle beach) The support tech(s) at ASUS have had me config the realtek speaker app to 2 chan. and the Windows sound app at 5.1, to no avail. which leads me to suspect a software issue...? To achive 5.1 for my music, movies and DTV would be great, but at this point, I may settle for having a salesman or tech rep bleed at my feet.
mobo- ASUS A8N SLI deluxe AMD64 3200+ ATI HD Wonder ATI X800XL Realtek ALC850 8chan codec OR TurtleBeach Catalina ! gig mem XP Media Center 2005
I dont know, but i have done all i can do, so I seek a higher power. Therefore I emplore the Wizards of the forum to smile upon me this day, and deliver me from the tempest of general disenchantment that fogs my mind.
I Thank you for enduring such a lengthy post, I hope I put it in the right place