Playing a DTS sound track does not equal encoding on the fly. It equals "bit perfect" playback of the encoded signal through to your receiver for DTS decoding there.
If your sound card can do enocding on the fly it will be called DTS connect, DTS interactive, or dolby digital live, so you could look in the manual for that.
To answer the sound card output levels, the sound card outputs are "line" or "pre-amp" level, not speaker level. You need an amplifier between the sound card and the speakers. A 5.1 or 7.1 amp with pre-amp or line in would be needed.
Yes, these day's HDMI is easier. You'll need a graphics card with an HDMI output and capable of doing HDMI digital sound. This doesn't have to be fancy becase you don't need it for video, gaming, etc. just for sound. Unfortunately they often don't mention that on the box, but may have it. You don't have to use it for video but you do need to connect it to your HDMI home theater.
For Nvidia cards, go to the Nvidia control panel then under "display" click on "Set up digital audio". That will give you an hdmi output device that will show up in the windows sound control panel, which you can configure for 5.1 or 7.1 output.
Then in Plogue, remove whatever output device you are using now, at the output of Zmon, and instead use the new one for HDMI.
In Plogue right click --> audio devices --> output then look through the choices and you should see something that you can recognize as the HDMI output.
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