Your Realtek probably isn't doing that, which is why you are left with stereo. however, for games, you need something that can transcode the raw audio into DTS on the fly. Your onboard audio would have no trouble passing along something that already exists in DTS format to your receiver, which naturally, is able to decode it properly and give you true 5.1 audio. I have a suspicion you are getting 5.1 from movies because they audio track is already DTS encoded. Guess I was wrong but I still hope I PC audio is tricky. I kinda assumed that 20 years later this shouldnt be an issue anymore. Since then I got out of touch with that topic. Last time I was confronted with that issue was 20 years ago and afair back then Creative was the only soundcard producer who could even manage with an analog 5.1. 5.1 works flawlessly with movies and thats the only 5.1 I get on the spdif out until now. I tested it with 3 different soundcards now. Only on my older creative 5.1 system - even though the analog input has one broken channel - the optical+spdif connections are still working at 5.1. Just I cant use the analog output because both of my sound systems have one broken channel. If someone shoots/runs/talks behind me its still louder in front which kinda defeats the purpose of a 5.1 system. The only way I get a crap 5.1 is on stereo in the Realtek settings + Dolby Atmos (or Dolby Home Theater) but all that dolby does is copy sound from the front to the back. I tried DTS and DDL alone and even together with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Home Theater.
#IS XEAR AUDIO CENTER NEEDED SOFTWARE#
My soundsystem can decode DTS and DDL thus I dont even need a software for it to work. Yea I have a 5.1 soundsystem and (you didnt ask it yet but.) yes the games are set to 5.1, else my question would be rather stupid. Anthem doesnt show any DTS/DDL logo, the rest I gotta check. Anthem, Battlefield 5, Black Desert Online, Apex, SW-tor.