Hello all readers. I just found this forum and am hoping for a little help from all the experts out there.

I have a PC with integrated digital audio. To be specific:

Motherboard:
ASUS P4PE

Integrated Sound:
SoundMAX Integrated DIgital Audio
Driver 5.12.1.3665 (latest update)

Connected via optical cable to my Sony STS-DE475 Home A/V Receiver which is connected with 5.1 speaker system.

Before you rag on the equipment, it's enough sound for me and it does sound decent enough. It's definately not top of the line, but that's not why I am here.

I am trying to get 5.1 surround coming out of the Sony receiver, but when i do some tests with the audio, the audio is not circulating in a 5.1 circle. It does the first test tone Front Right but it also comes out Rear Right.. and no sub tone is heard either.

I have checked all properties in windows, for example the SPeaker properties, advanced and set that to 5.1 and also in the SoundMAX application panel and set that to digital out and 5.1

I get the digital audio coming out and when compared to the RCA is a very nice comparison, but to my ear it doesn't seem like a true 5.1 and the tests i've done don't convince me.

Is there something I am missing in all this? Anyone have a similar setup that would like to give me some advice. It would be very much appreciated.

What is the test tone you trying? is it built in to your Sony receiver, or generated by comp? if the second than what is happenning is that it does what is know as "expand all", basically it sees you've got more speakers than channels on the current playing sound file, so it tries to artificially create surround for you. You should try something that's proper surround to begin with, like a DVD (there are those Dolby Surround demos on some)

btw wouldn't it be nice if someone with SoundForge or Audition with Dolby plug-in, created a small surround file with some noise, for each channel one after another... there is uploads forum here.....

There's already been posted a short surround test file here. All that's left is to encode it to AC3.