Need a sound card to connect to my new Q66R Sound Bar

LogiXYZ · October 9, 2019

Hi Everybody,

This is my first time posting, so please don't bite my head if a similar question have been asked before, and I failed to find it. :)

I moved apartment about a year ago. It is small but cozy :) It is however so small that I have been forced to give up my old computer desk. Which means that these days I connect my gaming computer directly to my TV (Samsung 55" Series 7). And after spending some time working out how to get the screen to deliver 60hz (Which it only does at 1080p or 4k, nothing in between), I have actually been quite happy using this setup. There was of course one slight issue, which was the sound. It was for obvious reason rather complete crap since TV speakers these days doesn't really deliver much performance.

After about a year, on saturday I had enough and fulfilled about a year long dream to invest in a sound bar for my television. I ended up getting a Samsung Q66R Sound Bar. It is a 5.1 system and when I play movies using the netflix app on my tv it is really showing what it can do. Unfortunately my computer seem unable to go beyond stereo, so the sound bar is unable to deliver anywhere near its potential when I use my computer. Which is to say pretty much all the time, as I pretty much only use the computer and only rarely use netflix. I only recently upgraded my computer and it seems like my onboard soundcard is only capable of delivering stereo. I'm not sure if HDMI Arc doesn't support 5.1 when using the computer (using an Strix GTX 1060), but I could read my way towards seeing that with toslink it would probably support 5.1. But my onboard doesn't even a toslink.

So at this point it seems clear that I need a dedicated sound card. Only the last time I went shopping for a dedicated sound card was back when it was called Sound Blaster 1024 (if I recall correctly). At this point I'm completely at a loss when it comes to what to buy. In fact I don't even know where to start. Which is why I'm posting here in the hope someone will be able to offer up some guidance.

TL:DR; What sound card should I buy in order to get my computer to output 5.1 audio through HDMI (Strix GTX 1060) to my TV (Samsung 55" Series 7), so my sound bar (Samsung Q66R) will play 5.1 audio when gaming?

LogiXYZ

rice guru · October 10, 2019

no soundcard can fix that for you it's down to the audio setting in your pc the adpater withing the speakers itself does all the work a "sound card" would do. I'm not going to go into the whole your not getting the true 5.1 supurnd experience wth a soundbar like that. but because you are toutputtinga digital signl like an hdmi cable it's all on windows or realtek sound settings or your sound bar's build in DAC to do the work