hmm, ok, I have an Audigy ES (SB0162). I have to admit, I'm pretty new to this surround sound stuff and everything - I've always just been using onboard sound with 2.1 speaker - so sorry for my cluelessness.
I just looked on the back of the Audigy and what I see is an obvious microphone jack (colored pinkish red), a jack witha picture of sound waves and an arow pointing into them (colored blue) - I would suspect it's input, but what's the difference between that input and the microphone input?, a jack with sound waves and an arrow pointing out of them, marked "_2" (colored black), a jack with, again, sound waves and an outward arrow, this time marked "_1" (colored green) - this is where I have my 2.1 speakers plugged into, since the color matches their plug, and lastly an jack with sound waves and outward arrow, marked "digital out OR _3" (colored orange). Sorry if this seems really obvious but like I sadi I've never dealt with anything more than 2.1 before. Is the _1-3 like left/right/center?
The other thing is that games are not my only concern. While Doom 3 may be the impetus for my interest in a surround sound system, the majority of sound coming from my speakers is music and then, every now and then, movies. While at a friend's house yesterday, I checked out his Z-5300's which he recently got. They sounded very nice, but the rear speakers seemed to have very little sound coming out of them, even for music when, theoretically, the sound should be equal on all speakers. He played with the fader a bit and it fixed it somewhat, but not entirely. Then, when we tested out a DVD it was terrible. Aside for the lack of significant sound from the rear, there were HUGE problems with the surround sound. When the Matrix surround was off, the movie sounded very good - just like a movie would sound on a very nice, non-surround sound speaker system. However, when we tried turning on Matrix surround for Saving Private Ryan, not only did it not sound like there was much distinction between the different channels, but some things were missing! We could hear the bullets and explosions, sure, but not a single word that was being spoken was audible.
Now, I didn't think about this _1, _2, _3 stuff to check that at the time - had no idea it even existed (he also has an Audigy, but Audigy 2) - so maybe his speakers weren't set up properly. I'll try to go over there today and check it out again, but all I could think of at the time was how terible it sounded. They were great for music, and they sounded good on Quake 3 (unfortunately he doesn't have a game that actually supports surround sound I don't think), but the sound on the DVD was just horrendous. These are supposed to be good speakers though, so I figure there must have been something wrong with the setup.
Anyways, so those are the jacks I have on my sound card. Hope that helps - even if it doesn't, would someone mind explaining what the heck they are to me?
And if you have any input regarding surround sound for DVD movies and the Z-5300, or any other model, feel free to provide that as well.
Thanks!