Can't get 5.1 surround sound to work?
Here's the basics. I plugged my 5.1 surround sound receiver into my SPDIF port on my laptop (which everybody claims supports 5.1). But when I go into my playback devices in windows 7 to set up the 5.1, there are two different options... To set up the surround sound, the sound has to go through the "Speakers / Headphones" playback device, but my SPDIF port uses the "Digital Audio" playback device, with no option that i can see to make it more than 2 channels. And of course sound can only go through one at a time, and both work just fine by themselves, just no surround sound. So how can I get the "Digital Audio" device to set up for surround sound? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Just thinking about this a little more, and putting it out here so somebody can tell me if i'm right or wrong. But i'm guessing the SPDIF port automatically sends out the signal in 5.1 sound. So it's the receivers job to interpret the signal. So if i'm not getting the surround sound that I want, it's on the receivers side, not the laptop.