Surround sound from PC to home theatre?

[CuTe]

I'm trying to connect my Creative x-fi xtrememusic to my home theater. now I could use coaxial but i heard there is some encoding thing where I'm only going to get stereo, can anyone tell me how this should be done?

[streetster]

does the x-fi support Dolby Digital Live encoding? I have a feeling it doesnt, so the best way to get multi-channel is to use the analogue jacks on the back of the card and hook them up to your home theater amp

[Skinleech]

Well, my Audigy 2 lets me use digital coax out in the form of a stero minijack to coax cable. That goes into the back on my Amp, and all I need to do is set the Audigy 2 to output via Sp/dif and all ac3 or DTS tracks are played as they should be.

If you're talking from a games point of view, them you'd need to use analogue connections in order to get 5.1 as games don't have Dolby Digital or DTS tracks.