Surround sound PC gaming

[ic1male]

Almost ready to nab myself a set of 5.1 speakers but I was just wondering how does this all work on a PC. I'm surmising that on consoles the programmers work to the Dolby Digital spec and hence you automatically get DD 5.1 surround on speakers which support it.

But PCs don't have that - they mainly use EAX. Is it the same thing - just Creative's take on it? Do the EAX games automatically have the 5.1 channels for surround speakers? Just by enabling EAX 2/3/4 HD in the games will I get surround sound?

Ta.

 

[ic1male]

Generally PC surround sound is of analogue output, so no card is required to convert the signal into digital. Therefore the vast majority of PC surround speakers use multiple outputs through the 3.5mm jacks. So one for Left / Right, one for rear left/right and one for centre/sub.

Yes, that's right. I was planning to hook up the sound card on my PC using these three jacks and then connect the Xbox 360 via the digital optical connector.