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Hello everyone!



This is actually my first post here, so if it has to be moved, please do so.



I'm actually considering getting a playbase for my pc monitor (it's a big 35" ultrawide) and I already have a pair of play:1's.

The on board sound of my motherboard is the realtek ALC1220, which has an optical output.

However, the only thing holding me back right now, is that i'm afraid i'll end up with stereo from the playbase and two play:1's not giving off any sound.

I use my pc for all forms of media consumption, of which movies in the forms of streaming/blu-ray/downloaded, music and games. Will it depend on the movie/game whether surround sound will work on this combo, or can I be sure that all of them support dolby digital and therefore activate the rear speakers? This confusion was caused by the lack of HDMI and DTS support on it :(



Has anyone had a similar situation or any advice if it would work? I'd hate it to return such a great product.



Thanks in advance!
Hello there, Zor. Thanks for posting! I have a similar setup at home and am happy to help in any way I can. The content you are playing determines how the speakers are going to be utilized. For instance, if you were to play a video in Dolby Digital 5.1, the surrounds will work no problem. If the content you are playing only offers stereo, you can put the rear surrounds in Full Stereo. This means that the rears are treated as a stereo channel. Read more about this here.
Thanks for the reply!

So that means the new setup will play everything my old analog 5.1 set played as well? Guess i’m getting myself a playbase haha.
One thing to check is that your sound card will actually put out a Dolby Digital optical signal. There are some audio cards that only put out a stereo signal on optical.
One thing to check is that your sound card will actually put out a Dolby Digital optical signal. There are some audio cards that only put out a stereo signal on optical. Is there a list of sound cards that output a dolbu digital signal?
If there is, I'm not aware of where it is. I know that many years ago (5?) I ran into this issue where a soundcard had an optical out, but in order to get 5.1, I had to connect to the analog outputs. Not sure that made a ton of sense, honestly.



But I'd look at your soundcard's manual, and double check. I'd hope by now it's not an issue, but then I don't know how old your soundcard is, and prefer to make sure about these things before ending up trying to figure it out while frustrated. 🙂
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