Sound is driving me nuts

[Archer]

Arrrr!! (Yes I'm upset that I missed International Pirate Day). Anyway...
Currently using the onboard sound to drive a set of 5.1 Logitech X530 speakers. So last night I fire up a Blue Man Group vid, and to my horror the sound is crummy. So I scratch around and finally figure out the onboard sound has conveniently left out Dolby and/or DTS. So now I'm not sure if the sound is being passed correctly to the speakers. To confirm I listened to many 5.1 vids and found that most of the audio comes through the center speaker, and mostly background sound (like music) comes out the side and rear speakers. No real surroundness at all. I'm guessing I needs me a proper sound card with Dolby and/or DTS decoders right?

So probably going to pick up an Asus Xonar, either the DS or the D1. One has Dolby, one has DTS, neither has both. So now I'm confused again And no, not going to spend more then R800 on this since the final plan is to get a decent AV reciever to do the decoding and feed it via the optical out on the mobo or via HDMI on a HD5650

 

[ichigo]

so is the dolby/dts on the motherboard or not? or just unplugged

 

[Archer]

The Dolby decoder is optional on the Realtek chip. The motherboard in question does not have the option added.

 

[Decotey]

Archer have you tried running the videos off different players, I know some vids don't like being played in surround sound through media player.

 

[Archer]

I have tried VLC, WMP, MPCHC and XBMC. I've done some more of my own searching and will likely get the Dolby enabled set, seems to be the more popular format. No idea though what will happen if a DTS track is being played.