I see, that's a very odd issue. Obviously I haven't encountered it since I run a single monitor setup.

Your comment about fullscreen Flash in Linux caught my eye. I've had proper hardware-accelerated fullscreen Flash for years, it works perfectly apart from not automatically disabling my screensaver (but that's a really minor annoyance. I'm using an nVidia GPU with the proprietary driver, though. That probably makes a difference.

Only one subwoofer? I guess that's OK, if you want to live with the peaks and nulls created by room nodes and standing waves.

Two identical subwoofers set up and placed correctly to even out the peaks and nulls will make an enormous change to the sound quality of low bass content, as well as expand the 'sweet spot' greatly. It's still only 2.1, since the subs are fed a mono signal (stereo is meaningless below 100Hz or so).

Running two subs also buys you 3dB more headroom by effectively halving the needed amplifier power in each sub for the same volume level. It's not much, but every little bit helps when you're dealing with bass.

Because that's what Thor does.

Also shown here in the only true comic about Thor (and friends and foes), the Danish "Valhalla" comic by Peter Madsen. None of this Marvel junk, please.

http://i.imgur.com/87zorZg.jpg
Notice that Thor is shown in accordance with Norse mythology, as a stout man with red hair and a bushy beard. No fair-haired prettyboys here!

http://i.imgur.com/46TT17b.jpg
"How many times must I tell you? Don't touch my stuff!"

Best comic ever.

The conversion from electrical to optical is literally just an LED fed by the electrical signal. On the other end, it's pretty much just a photodiode outputting an electrical signal directly. There are a few extra components, but it is a very simple conversion.

Or Firewire, but fewer and fewer PCs have them, I guess. There's also Thunderbolt if you're into Apple.

Doesn't DisplayPort also do uncompressed surround sound like HDMI?

Even so, with a quality PSU in my system, I still get CPU/GPU-based noise on the onboard analog outputs. It's a known issue with processors in power saving modes. If the power saving is disabled completely or the CPU is loaded 100% on all cores, the noise disappears. Look it up, it's a surprisingly common issue.

I had a Xonar D1 in my PC for a while, the noise was still there, but significantly less so. With S/PDIF to an external DAC, it's completely gone.

That's why I didn't mention the cable, just the DAC :-)

Strictly speaking, for a proper standards-compliant S/PDIF connection, it must be a 75 ohm coaxial cable. Luckily, pretty much all RCA leads seem to be coaxial (I guess it's probably the cheapest), and the impedance is close enough that it doesn't matter. If it can carry composite video, it can carry S/PDIF. I've yet to come across an RCA lead that's shitty enough that it can't handle composite video, even the $2.50 ones at the local discount store are OK.

This is absolutely 100% the best solution if you have an AV receiver. Let the dedicated audio hardware do the sound processing it was made for.

And a great DAC can be had for less than $30: http://www.amazon.com/D03K-Dig...

I've been using one for a while now, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Noise-free stereo sound for not a lot of money.

Those are absolutely worthless unless the connectors are gold-plated.

A good DAC can be had for $30: http://www.amazon.com/D03K-Dig...

Hooking up one of those using S/PDIF is one of the easiest ways to get good noise-free audio from a PC.

You can try disabling power saving on your CPU. In my PC, the lower-power states generate a lot more noise than when it's running at full tilt.

Luckily, digital S/PDIF output to an external DAC takes care of the noise completely.

Sample rates higher than 44.1kHz/48kHz are pointless for playback anyway. Higher sample rates allow for frequencies above 22.05kHz/24kHz, but no one can hear those anyway.