What Sound System you use for Gaming

[Pemalite]

Azzanation said:

3) A couple hundred dollars wouldn't be anything amazing. You can also buy cheap home theatre systems dirt cheap that would sound crappy as well. Cheap speakers are cheap speakers after all.

I spent probably a couple hundred bucks on my 5.1 hifi sound system for my PC. Yet to hear a sound bar that produces higher quality audio... And that sound system is probably 10+ years old.

So I am not speaking directly from ignorance here.

When it comes to 3D positional Audio, sound bars just cannot compete.

SvennoJ said:

Pemalite said:

I don't even use my receivers HDMI pass through. - Everything goes to my TV, my TV then outputs to the receiver via optical audio... I get all my cake and eat it too.

Optical audio is also limited to 2.0 uncompressed or 5.1//7.1 lossy compressed. Same as HDMI ARC.

I use both the amp and the tv for inputs, too many devices, not enough ports on either. Combined it works!

You aren't wrong.
With that in mind... Toslink allows for upto 125MBs of bandwidth... Keep in mind that it's software layer is based upon S/PDIF and generally it's the cable that really differs.
In short, can still do 24bit/192khz over 5.1 (Although the DSP is 48bit, I am not enough of an Audiophile to actually care). - Don't really notice the difference with regards to compression, I can't tell the difference between CD and a high quality MP3 encode either.

Hearing you on the lack of ports. Having the NES, SNES Classic, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One X, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Android Emulator box... Occasionally my laptop... Running against a port wall.
HDMI switches exist for a reason I guess.