Windows 7 No Dolby Digital Sound - Please HELP!

Hello,

I am coming here for help as I have tried everything possible to get Dolby Digital sound to play my games in.

My setup:

Custom built desktop with AMD 965 BE Quad Core, Asus M4N98TD EVO motherboard, eVGA GeForce 470 Superclocked graphics card.

The motherboard supports native 7.1 and has it's own Digital Coaxial & Optical outputs.

The graphics card carries up to 7.1 via HDMI. I am running my graphics card HDMI output to my Samsung 40 1080P LCD.

I have tried just running HDMI to my TV, then using the Optical output from the TV to my receive, as well as running the optical output from the motherboard directly to my receiver, to no avail.

In the Windows sound option, I have enabled Digital Audiot S/PDIF. When I click Supported format, I see Dolby Digital and can hit test, at which point I see my receiver switch from ProLogic / Stereo to Digital, however sound only comes out of my front speakers as if it were in Stereo.

Under Advanced Tab, it only shows 2 channel options. If I right click on Digital Audio (S/PDIF) there is no 'configure' option, where I could select the speakers.

This really bothers me, since when trying to play all my games, i.e. Battlefield 2 Bad Company I can only get Pro-Logic.

This should be much more straight-forward, but I can't for the life of my figure it out.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

SOME audio systems only have two channel stereo output on digital. I've seen this on some of the Dell PC's with S/PDIF output. On those systems the only way to get more than two channel is to use the analog outputs on the sound.

This may be the case with yours too.

No, that's not the case. I confirmed it last night when testing with a movie using WMP, it played it back in Dolby Digital.

I still can't figure out why my games aren't playing in Dolby Digital when the screen even pops up before launching the game saying it's in DD.

I've checked all options, etc., and can't figure it out. I'm also still baffled that when checking the sound in Windows 7 and performing the DD test it doesn't play all speakers.

This should not be so complicated, and I'm not a pc/audio newb by far.

Thanks for your help though, I'd welcome ANY other suggestions folks may have.

Thanks in advance.

I'm fairly certain that you need to install a software package called "Dolby Control Center" which provides, among other things, the "Dolby Digital Live" component that the games route their surround sound information through. The "Dolby Control Center" only works on approved Realtek hardware with proper drivers, so make sure you also have the latest / greatest audio driver also installed from your manufacturer. If you are unable to locate the Dolby package from your manufacturer but are certain your system is certified, Intel usually has a copy on their web site if you go to their downloads section and do a search for it. This only works through a TOSLINK connection, it is not supported across HDMI.

Good luck...