this is the method i used! tested on fedora 42/intel and freebsd142/intel

heres what you'll need:
an audio reciever with 5.1 and hdmi support and eArc support, without eArc this setup wont work
an nvidia card with hdmi out
the latest nvidia drivers
an hdmi cable for computer hdmi out->audio reciever's hdmi in
an hdmi cable for audio reciever eArc out->computer monitor
a monitor or tv that supports hdmi in
5.1 or 7.1 out (rear, front, center, subwoofer or opt side)

heres how it works, your computer outputs both audio and video into your audio receiver, and when the audio data is outputted from your 5.1 reciever, it plays on the reciever, and plays simutaniously on your computer monitor

this works by plugging the computers hdmi out into the hdmi in of your eArc receiver (meaning like, computers hdmi out connects to the hdmi in labeled 'bluray') and plugging your hdmi out (the eARC out port) into your computer monitor.

thats computer hdmi out->reciever in && reciever_out->computer monitor in!
meaning the computer outputs both hdmi in and out av into your hdmi monitor and receiver speakers

this allows upsampling, dolby audio out, video improvments, and you can configure your audio receievers settings on your monitor. there are a ton of high end audio recievers and leaps and bounds more high fidelity speakers, and since most of the signal processing is done on the reciever, it allows for really high quality audio to be outputted from your reciever

configuring this is simple, just select the hdmi out port on gnome3 (other distros i dont know, and through the command line prompt you need to change your audio out to the hdmi out. freebsd has 4 options on my rtx, 3 displayport (not many audio recievers support displayport to 5.1 reciever), and 1 hdmi out, i selected the sole hdmi port by process of elimination, and i had 5.1 audio working on my freebsd workstation.

yes, this means you can play audio on linux/bsd/nvidia (and possibly amd) devices without a dedicated sound card, like the soundblaster x series which can be a pain to configure and setup on linux. so you can game or produce using this method and its almost flawless! thanks nvidia!

unidef