Dolby 5.1 to home theater receiver?

[royphil345]

Hi,

Have a DVD-R drive installed with no analog or digital audio cable. The sound from CDs or DVDs somehow comes through anyway through the ribbon cable, running XP.

Have an Audigy 2 sound card hooked to my home theater receiver using a mono 1/8" plug to RCA plug cable between the digital out on the sound card and digital in on the receiver.

Getting excellent stereo sound from the receiver this way. From what I've read, I should be able to get Dolby Digital on DVDs passed through the sound card to be decoded by the receiver using this hookup and PowerDVD to play DVDs. No Dolby Digital is being detected by the receiver.

Think it would do the trick if I added a digital audio cable between the DVD-R drive and the sound card? I think there is a hookup for a digital cable on the back of the DVD-R drive. No hookup for a standard analog audio cable though. Anything else I might be doing wrong?

Thanks MUCH for any help!!!  
Roy

[panboy]

your sound card can decode the Dolby Digital sound by itself , the sound it send out is already decoded, and all you have to do is hook it up to a digital amp

[royphil345]

Thanks for the reply panboy!!!

 I'll try to look into this some more...