Audio confusion

[RobSmith]

Right guys,

I've always been a big audio-tech noob so I'd be grateful if someone could clear a few things up for me.

I currently have a Asus Xonar DS card and a pair of Astro A40s. My sound card is simply seated into a PCI slot without any SPDIF or any other connections made. The audio quality sounds great to me, however I don't know differently so I could be missing out on the extra quality.

Does directly plugging my headset into the pink/green jacks on the sound card mean I'm using 5.1 or 7.1?

If not, how do I make complete use of my sound card, how can make sure I'm using 5/7.1?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Hank_Marvin]

Means you are using stereo.

 

[Marsman]

Don't those A40's have a control unit that uses SPDIF optical/toslink connection? If so, that's the only way to get any kind of 5.1/surround sound. Using green and pink connections is just stereo for the green and pink for the microphone.

However, it's not quite as simple as using the optical connection (assuming the A40's have it), as the sound card needs to be capable of outputting 5.1 via optical. While the DS can do this when playing DVD's, it cannot when it comes to games. That would mean buying a Xonar D1/X.