Audio ports on pc movie#

I don't usually use the terms 'sound quality' and 'on-board audio' in the same sentence. One cable is easier to run than many cables. I would personally prefer a S/PDIF connection. Should I be looking at a surround sound system that accepts SPDIF or are the 6 ports digital and immune to noise like the SPDIF connector and therefore no sound quality difference should be expected?

I intend to play games as well as watch blue ray movies. I would like to purchase a decent surround sound system to connect to this. If the 6 ports are analog, then how is it some of them can carry more than two signals? My assumption up to this point is each port is a two signals + ground.

Audio ports on pc movie#

Should I be looking at a surround sound system that accepts SPDIF or are the 6 ports digital and immune to noise like the SPDIF connector and therefore no sound quality difference should be expected? Or if the 6 ports are analog but SPDIF does not support 7.1 audio, am I stuck with analog only or can a combination of the two be used like stereo SPDIF for head phone use and analog for surround sound in movie watching? The 6 connectors shown (Orange, black, grey, blue, green, pink) allow me to connect up a 7.1 speaker system. The motherboard is an ASUS Sabertooth X58. I have a computer motherboard with both an optical SPDIF connector as well as 6 ports for audio output. I'm trying to understand something and I think it's a terminology issue that is confusing the issue for me.