[trepidation]

when I initially looked at 7.1, I was looking at the angle of pushing it through the optical outputs on a soundcard. At the time, and I anticipate it being the same now, that just wasn't possible and 5.1 was the best I could hope for.

Fast forward a year or two, I see a few vague posts about pushing 7.1 through the hdmi port on video cards.

Is there a special trick to this, or is this just a "long as you have the right hardware" type deal? Right now my intent is to build up a machine for linux. It's not really a must-have. It is more of a seeking to understand thing.

[baijuxavior]

HDMI supports 7.1 audio. Optical supports only upto 5.1.

[trepidation]

yeah, I figured that part out. i am more focused on "how do I do it?"

I had always imagined video cards with hdmi ports, only passed video and the audio channels were dead.

[DDDamian]

Any newer video card with an HDMI port will pass audio, including Bluray formats like DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD if your receiver supports it. You don't mention what OS you're using. Windows would be the easiest to set up. If you are on Linux an nVidia card is the way to go.

[trepidation]

Yeah, I was thinking linux... It's up there, honest, I just left it out of the subject line because I was trying to be general.

I figure I will go Linux until I hit a brick wall. I am pretty familiar with windows, and I can do some pretty absurd things with it... but any experience is worth the tradeoff in time to figure stuff out... that and there is something really nice and non-committal to a free OS.

Any nvidia cards to look out for, or dodge?

[sialivi]

HDMI supports 7.1 audio. Optical supports only upto 5.1.

S/PDIF can actually do 6.1 (dts-es discrete), maybe even 7.1, multichannel compressed audio but it can only do 2ch pcm.