Dolby 5.1 and Stereo Output Simultaneously

[rsagetv99]

Is it possible, for a show that has the support for both formats, to output Dolby 5.1 to the SPDIF port and output Stereo sound through the lineout port of a soundcard?

I have an Asus A8V Pro with onboard Realtek soundcard and a 6800GT.
I want to use the DVI and SPDIF out to go to my HDTV and audio receiver and the S-Video and Line-Out to go to my Channel Plus box.

[jlabrue]

I would be interested to know as well. I have tried with similar HW (MSI, Realtek) but can't seem to find the right "mix" to get to work. I am almost positive I had it working before but can't get any success now.

[Wakecrash]

I have a chaintech 7NJL6 nforce2 board that does. Perhaps because nforce2 chipset handles the digital audio then the codec converts to audio. I have no idea about your board. In the audio control software that came with the board, I just turn both digital out and analog out on.

[AboveUnrefined]

You should be able to use the SPDIF and full 7.1 (your board actually has 7.1, but you'd only be using 6 of the 8 channels) analog at the same time (stereo being L & R channels). I don't think it's possible to have SPDIF have the all the channels and then mix the multichannel audio to be pure stereo if that's what you're aiming for (and if it is possible it'd need to be CPU intensive to deliver in realtime)... both outputs will be set to either stereo or full channel sound.

Anything being encoded in 5.1 sound is usually done so intelligently where L and R channels have essentials like speech and major sound effects, but you'll find that speech will be very quiet and annoying with the music being too loud. Maybe you can get some sort of external mixer device to mix everything that should be in the left hemisphere (LF, LR, splited Center) and everything in the right hemisphere (RF, RR, splitted Center) so you can hear everything in pure stereo -- I'd keep the .1 channel to the subwoofer, but that depends on your speakers and if they can handle the low tones.