I've been on forums all across the interwebs, trying to see if there is a way I can get proper 5.1 surround with my setup. I'll explain my situation and my setup. I use my Samsung 4k tv and home theater system as my monitor and sound system for PC as well. You can see my PC specs below.

Im on Windows 10 x64 Pro. The issue im experiencing is that I don't get proper Dolby Digital SS via HDMI. When i play games that support DDSS, sound usually comes out of the front L/R and Center speakers. The sub doesn't work at all, sometimes sound comes out the rear speakers too, but never the sub. I think this is because I'm forced to use my TV as a hub. Hdmi connected from gpu to TV and then TV to Home Theater via another hdmi. My HT has two available ports. 1 HDMI and 1 SPDIF.
Now, if i go into the Asus Supreme FX software and set it up to pass sound directly from the Optical port on my Hero Alpha to the Optical on the Home Theater, Surround Sound does work, and it sounds pretty decent. However everyone says that HDMI is clearly the superior connection because it can pass a 6+ channel uncompressed audio signal whereas an optical cable can only pass 2 channel that must be artificially converted into 5.1 or so on.

When connected through HDMI, even when the Supreme Effects software is set to DTS interactive, surround does not work. And under windows audio settings I only have "stereo" as an option for speaker setup. My research online has lead me to discover that this is likely due to the communication between the devices. Some have insisted that despite it saying Stereo if you were to play something that was encoded with DTS or other SS encoding, that it would be played properly through their speakers, and for some ppl it does and some it doesn't. Im one of those unlucky ones who simply can't get SS via hdmi.

The other annoying part is that only one port on my Home Theater system can work at once. So if you're using the Hdmi port, the optical port is automatically disabled. So basically every time I want to switch between watching TV and playing on my PC, I have to reach behind my HT system and unplug the hdmi cable in order to use the Optical cable for audio. It can be really freaking annoying (especially when my back is giving me trouble).

I really want to know how I can get true surround sound from my Strix or Motherboard. I've explored many avenues but to no avail thus far. The Internet is full of "blame games". Some blame it on the TV's, some on Windows 10, etc. I can say that Surround sound used to work via hdmi when I was back on Windows 7 and now it doesn't on 10, so idk.

I just want to be able to experience true uncompressed audio, especially when i listen to high quality music files like FLACs and albums that were encoded in glorious 24/96 Surround Sound lol. And Id like my games to actually have bass when I play them.


It's been difficult to cover all possible causes of this problem and find the root. I mean the PC has many audio options, and both the TV and Home Theater system have their own audio settings as well. But I've messed around with all of them and cannot seem to find a combo that works via HDMI.

Sorry for writing a novel but I wanted to try and cover as much as possible in order to avoid suggestions that Ive already tried.