At some point recently I got a Phillips home receiver and when I was in windows settings of some form I clearly remember finding a box somewhere allowing me to change from PCM audio to AC3 and back. Each time I switched my receiver automagically picked up on it, and a clear difference was heard.

I'm having trouble googling without finding results of AC3 Filter program. Could anybody please help me navigate to this dialogue box?

-The Zohan
Dell Inspiron 531s
4 Gb DDR2 ram
2.1 Ghz x2 Athlon (64) Dual Core
Seagate 500 Gb HDD
HD Radeon 6570

And Now-Phillips FR-965 5.1 Receiver

The settings are probably in the Control Panel under Sounds (I have Vista). Each of the listed sound options (outputs for playback) are configurable depending on what hookup your device uses. If its digital spdif or digital usb for instance. Never the less you can look in the properties of any of them to see if your missing settings are there.