Digital out audio; spdif pass-through?

[quequotion]

Anyone ever use the optical audio out on the back of the PS2?
I never had the amplifier to plug it in to back in the day, but I do now.

I also have a digital audio card on my motherboard (like everyone these days) with an AC3 5.1 Surround alsa output controlled by pulseaudio. If PCSX2 could output a digital audio stream, pulseaudio could pass it through to the amp.

Do any games have enhanced digital sound? Surround Sound? Dolby Digital?

[rama]

Very few do. It's usually an FMV that can be set to use 5.1 audio (AC3). One such example is the Ar Tonelico 2 intro.
We don't support this though. We tried once but there were issues we couldn't fix back then so it was dropped.
You can get a similar quality from setting your decoder to ProLogic 2 (try the movie setting). At least in AR1 and AR2, you'll
clearly hear it has been PL2 encoded for regular stereo