This is really bugging me. I wish we could just use HDMI audio. I've started using optical audio, and it's really nice, but being limited to 2 channel uncompressed is really crappy. Not for me, because I am only using stereo... but that HDMI 7.1 uncompressed sounds really nice... but needing to run the audio back out of the receiver into the monitor is really grinding my gears. Why can't I just pipe HDMI audio to the receiver and be done with it? I loathe copy protection! They don't even make it possible to jump through this hurdle for some. Who builds a kickass gaming rig with HDMI audio and a 60hz monitor? Why no 120/144hz support?
...
OR, why can't they update optical audio? In my mind, albeit of limited understanding, optical should far surpass HDMI. HDMI by nature uses electrical signals, optical uses light. We've seen fiber optic far outclass electrical cable in internet infrastructure. Shouldn't TOSLINK, in theory, be capable of 7.1 uncompressed or better? Somebody needs to update the standard here...