Hourglass

I have to say even after all of these posts I don't understand what the path forward is, will I be able to fix this issue by changing the way the audio is encoded into the optical cable or need to buy some sort of sound card or need to replace everything?

The receiver is a Yamaha RX-V361. looking at page 30 in the manual of the receiver it seems that there is a setting I can turn on that will tell the receiver how to process the signal it is receiving with the AMP then MENU buttons, however the remote I have doesn't seem to do anything for these buttons, it may be that the remote is busted for the AMP button. So basically if I give the receiver 2.0 signal via optical from my PC the receiver should be able to take that digital signal and process it into a 5.1 audio out signal?

I really don't fully understand this. If I am feeding through SP/DIF my receiver a 2.0 audio signal it will only be able to give me 2.0 audio on the speakers, correct? What sort of setup do I need to move to to have actual 5.1 surround sound audio in my basement on a gaming computer? There are no codecs for windows 10 that support DTS or Dolby in optical format as I understand it.

Interesting, I can give this a try. How would one go about setting their computer to "Dump Stero" Mode?

Long story short I am trying to get my basement setup to run 5.1 surround sound audio from a PC to a receiver for movies, games, etc. I have a Yamaha RX-V361 receiver with speakers connected to it in a 5.1 configuration. I have an older desktop I was going to use for this purpose, my custom build from 2013(ish) which has an FX-8120, in a GA-990FXA-UD3 mobo which has optical audio out. This should be capable of outputting dolby digital or DTS 5.1 audio signals out. In fact I know it does, because when I test these encode formats in the sound settings I can hear each speaker independently playing sound. (see next picture to see where I am testing the sound). It would seem that when I updated this computer to win 10 from win 7 the Realtek drivers associated with the mobo decided to just no longer support 5.1 sound and all it will do is 2.0, which doesn’t even make any since because I can still go into the sound settings and test a 5.1 signal and hear that is works and then there is no option to use that signal as a default, only 2.0 options (see next picture). There isn't any modern info on the LTT youtube about audio or sound setups for computers in living room configurations. So I came here to ask: Am I screwed? Do I buy a $120+ PCI sound card just to get 5.1 optical audio out, or is there a different solution here that would involve a different receiver. I'm very lost on this issue and would appreciate any help anyone could give. P.S. I did also try getting different drivers per this microsoft suggestion on the problem but had absolutely no luck with that. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/51-optical-not-working-in-windows-10-1809/a9026823-9ce4-458e-a7e1-11047c863c33