Home theater reciever for 5.1 on computer

[Evoluter]

Can anyone tell me if I buy a home reciever with digital and optical inputs that it will give me the 5.1 channel surround my computer has. If have a Soyo Dragon Plus with the onboard 5.1 cmi audio. Can I just use the optical or digital outs to give my reciever the 5.1 signal? (I will be buying a reciever that has 5.1 decoding) Thanks.

 

[ApacheXMD]

If you're watching DVDs, then you might be able to pass the dolby digital signal out of the sound card and into your reciever and get surround sound. But If you're talking about surround sound in games and such, then no, your computer doesn't do Dolby Digital or DTS encoding so your reciever won't have anything to decode, just two channel stereo sound.

-patchy