I'm just wondering if there's some way to enable this in the game? I tried googling but found nothing about how to do so but I did find many reviews talking about how good the game sounded on a 5.1 system (console version).
Windows default settings nad everything are set to 5.1 but the game just uses stereo and there is no options for surround sound in game.
I dug through the ini's and couldn't really find anything about it either.
Does the pc version of this game not support surround sound?

Well, there's a lot of things that could be preventing surround sound. First things first, what OS are you using and how is your sound system set up?

Hmm, well I guess they just figured PC gamers wouldn't have surround systems. If there isn't a switch in the ini files or a setting in the game I think you're out of luck.
Well I guess they just figured PC gamers wouldn't have surround systems then. If there isn't a setting in the ini files or the game then I guess you're out of luck.

Nonsense, many games that time support Dolby or some special sound featurettes, like EAX. Like Halo, Half-Life 2 (even 7.1) or Doom3.
But true, in AR are no switch for this.

I've enabled 3D positional audio in Advent Rising, however now I have audio stuttering issues.
1. You need a Creative Soundcard (X-Fi etc.) that supports EAX.
2. You need the Software Creative Alchemy and create a new profile for the game:
Use Game Path: <yourinstalldrive and folder>/Advent Rising
Install into Sub Folder: System
This will put the following dlls into Advent Rising's system folder: dsound.dll and dsound.ini
By the way I have to follow this process for practically all older games to enable EAX and 3D Audio in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
3. Change these lines to True in the config file default.ini in Advent Rising's System folder
[ALAudio.ALAudioSubsystem]
UseEAX=True
Use3DSound=True
Now audio is not only stereo, but positional (front/back). If only there were no stuttering every 15 seconds, at least with my machine.

I have an ASUS Xonar DSX soundcard and a Genius 5.1 system. Sadly by default there's only Stereo sounds. But here's my workaround, which may only work owner of an ASUS Xonar card. Since Xonar's has this GX function, which emulates EAX for many game under Vista and 7.
So I use the GX on in the sound card control panel. Use 8 channels mixing and use netvisionary ini setting. The sound is OK and 5.1 surround.

On my system doing the following would cause it crash on startup unless I also did:

UseDefaultDriver=false

this did it,fixed,thanks.