Hi,

I hope someone can help; I can't get my SPDIF optical out working through my receiver and all the responses I can see on the web assume you have a sound card, while I settled for the (seemingly high end) sound on my motherboard (Asus P7P55D-E PRO), which appears to limit some of my options.

My set-up is a "new out of the box" one and is:
*Windows 7 PC (using PowerDVD10 for DVDs/Blurays and Windows media player for music)
*Asus P7P55D-E PRO motherboard - has 8-channel audio TRS jacks and SPDIF optical and coaxial out
*An old Yamaha receiver, whose only multi-channel input options are optical in and 6 channel RCA in. However, it still can handle DTS and DD
*Boston Acoustic Soundware XS 5.1 speakers

I've currently got the SPDIF optical out from the motherboard connected to the in on my receiver, have SPDIF enabled in the sound menu and the light is glowing red down the fibre. But I'm getting no sound at all.

What I want is to be able to play DVDs/BluRays in 5.1 but also to be able to play music in multi-channel mode (even though I know this will be "fake" multichannel; it's more about where I sit in the room and my requirement to use the sub because the Boston is a satellite/sub set-up)

My questions are:
*Will optical work at all for multi-channel? THe latest posts I can see suggest it does but some people seem to say optical only outputs stereo. Whom to believe?
*Even if it does work, I've read that I have to disable AC-3 decoding, or make various other changes, which don't seem to be possible without the menu options that a sound-card brings. Is the motherboard-only option just too inflexible?
*Although my SPDIF device is enabled in the sound menu, it insists under "Jack information" that it is a "rear panel RCA jack", when of course it is not (both TOSLINK and rCA jacks do exist). Has the PC just forgotten that it has an optical?
*I think I could relatively easily connect the 8-channel 3.5mm TRS jacks to my receiver 6-ch input jacks by way of TRS/RCA cables, but would that not stop me from being able to play music from media-player in multi-channel mode, as I'm not sure the motherboard can cope
*Or do I need to bite the bullet and buy a sound-card? And if so, how can I be sure the one I get doesn't have the same problem?

Any thoughts gratefully received,

Cheers,

simon