Hi all,

I recently purchased an SB Audigy 2 card and am trying to get DD 5.1 or any kind of 5.1 digital output out of my card to my receiver and it's not working.

I have a stereo miniplug from the audio card to a y-adapter plug that joins the two cables back to one single rca connection which is going into my coaxial in on my receiver.

I am getting 2.1 sound, but thats about it. When I try to do speaker setup in the SB console, it only plays sound through the L/R channels, but nothing through the others.

Someone please help, what am I doing wrong. I bought this card specfically to take advantage of being able to watch movies, play digital audio sources/games in true 5.1.

Thx.

You need a MONO mini phone plug with a female RCA connector. I think I paid $5 at The Source for it. Digital coax is only 1 conductor 1 ground.

You don't need the 'Y' either. You will need to enable Digital Out in your sound mixer.

You need a MONO mini phone plug with a female RCA connector. I think I paid $5 at The Source for it. Digital coax is only 1 conductor 1 ground.

You don't need the 'Y' either. You will need to enable Digital Out in your sound mixer.

Sounds good, I will pickup one of those. I figured it was the whole stereo plug thing that's screwing me up.

How do you do the second part? I knew how to do it with my old SB Live Digital 5.1 card, was available in the Advanced portion of the Mixer. However, with this new card, I don't see any options available.. just Bass/Treble settings.

I found the Enable check box under Sound Mixer in Entertainment from the Windows Start menu.

I found the Enable check box under Sound Mixer in Entertainment from the Windows Start menu.

This is gonna be long, so bear with me here.

I bought the mono miniplug to single rca yesterday from The Source with a 12' extension all for $16 taxes in which isn't bad I must say. The cables are of decent quality it looks and is fairly thick. So I connected the wires from my Digital Out of my Audigy card to the Coaxial input of my Receiver.

I have the latest version of PowerDVD for movie playback installed (v6).

I first try the SB Speaker settings test to calibrate my 5.1 setup, again I only get sound out of my FL/FR speakers and nothing out of my center,rears or sub.

I play a movie (that has a DD 5.1 track) and it only plays the surround effects from the FR/FL. I try same movie with WMP10 and it plays on all speakers, but I'm not sure if it's true DD or if my receiver is just using DPL to upmix the 2.0 to 5.1 since there is no DD sign on my receiver. (It always shows ][Digital sign when i'm playing a true DD signal ie. from my DVD player.

2 Channel music works fine and I've tried changing between the 2 different Coax in's on my receiver and no change.

Ok, on my computer, the enable Digital Out has been removed totally. I know what it looks like because I had it with my old SB Live card. I don't even know where to look for that setting in all the software that Creative has provided. I've launched a ticket to Creative helpdesk to see if they have any solutions for me.

I'm stuck here and I feel like i'm doing something wrong even though the SB manual even says this is the way to do it. Help! I'm getting frustrated here.

Thanks in advance.

MRM,

Does your SB card have an optical out on it? Just this week I managed to get my 5.1 audio working from my MCE box. I'm not sure if we are talking apples to apples, but let me tell you what I did:

Obviously, my onboard sound has an optical out so I connected my audio through an optical cable to my receiver. From there I went into my sound options in Windows:

Start | Settings | Control Panel | Sound | Advanced button at bottom left | Check off S/PDIF Enable

Now I use the newest PureVideo (NVDVD decoder) video decoder. From within PureVideo you enable S/PDIF passthrough as well.

That was all I had to do and now DVD and AVI playback are in DD 5.1 (assuming that the AVI has the proper audio track).

I know this is a little different than what you are doing, but since I just got this working on Tuesday, I thought it might help steer you in the right direction.

Jup

From there I went into my sound options in Windows:

Start | Settings | Control Panel | Sound | Advanced button at bottom left | Check off S/PDIF Enable



It's in Windows like Jup says... not Audigy control panel. BTW my Audigy Control Panel mysteriously disappeared too ??? For some weird reason I'm only getting 2 channels from my coax connection as well. I used to get full 5.1 DD and dts ???

I wonder if the new Catalyst 5.13 changed something ??? It's the only thing different from the last time I hooked it up.

Ok, on my computer, the enable Digital Out has been removed totally. I know what it looks like because I had it with my old SB Live card. I don't even know where to look for that setting in all the software that Creative has provided.

Mine's gone too ??? I looks like all Audigy stuff has disappeared... WTF ?

Have you installed Catalyst 5.13 recently ?

Although I don't have a PC to A/V system setup, I thought I would suggest getting hold of one of the Home Theatre setup DVDs, such as the Digital Video Essentials disc. Most of these discs lets you test your sound channel by channel, at least for a 5.1 speaker setup.

Good for video and sound setup.

Mine's gone too ??? I looks like all Audigy stuff has disappeared... WTF ?

Have you installed Catalyst 5.13 recently ?

Yes, I did the upgrade before I originally installed the card and was having issues. You mean for ATI Radeon series cards correct? Could that be something we need to look into?

I've been doing a bit of research on this issue on the net, and from what it looks like.. most SB cards cannot output a single stream via SPDIF out to a DD receiver. The SB cards send out 3 streams via the SPDIF that can only be decoded by the Cambridge speaker systems that Creative sells/supports.

What a fraud... i'm not impressed at all.

It looks like audio is only available through the 3 analog connectors, but not in true DD 5.1 setup. Unless someone knows a fix around this.

It looks like audio is only available through the 3 analog connectors, but not in true DD 5.1 setup. Unless someone knows a fix around this.

Are you sure. Usually the analog audio is output with a stereo cable: 3 cables gives 6 channels. If this is the case you would need three adapters to take the stereo signal and break them out to two RCA connectors. That would give you 6 analog cables to go to the 6 channel analog audio input on your receiver. It would be a bit kludgey compared to the simple digital cable connector but it should work if I am correct about the cables from the sound card carrying two channels of audio.

While my PC and my A/V components are near each other, I did not get past thinking about connecting my PC to my A/V setup because of problems like this and the fact that I didn't have anything I really wanted to display from my PC to my TV up until now.

Edited add on. The PC I had before my current one had a 5.1 speaker set which had 3 cables from the sound card to the controller for the speakers. These three stereo cables enabled the 6 channels to feed from the sound card to the speaker system. My current setup just has a digital audio cable from the sound card to the speaker system. Much, much easier.

Yes, I did the upgrade before I originally installed the card and was having issues. You mean for ATI Radeon series cards correct? Could that be something we need to look into?

I've been doing a bit of research on this issue on the net, and from what it looks like.. most SB cards cannot output a single stream via SPDIF out to a DD receiver. The SB cards send out 3 streams via the SPDIF that can only be decoded by the Cambridge speaker systems that Creative sells/supports.

What a fraud... i'm not impressed at all.

It looks like audio is only available through the 3 analog connectors, but not in true DD 5.1 setup. Unless someone knows a fix around this.

Looks like we are brothers in arms...

The digital audio used to work before 5.13. WMV-HD clips are now not working properly either.. hmmm.

Digital audio OUT should work with one coax connector.

I'm going to re-install the Audigy drivers, loose 5.13 (if I can) with the Uninstall ATI program and get back to you. (Give me a bit. I have to connect/disconnect quite a few things between the monitor and the HD display).

I'm really not impressed with this... Chin up !

I see I'm not the only one with this problem. I have the audigy 2 ZS and had an AIW 9600XT with the latest MCE drivers when I originally built my new HTPC. Since then I replaced the AIW with a Nvidia 6600GT and even though I uninstalled all the ATI software I still can't get better than 2 channel audio, not even DD 2.0. I may try your idea and uninstall the sound card drivers and reinstall them. Hope it works.

I cant believe that the Catalyst drivers would cause such an issue. What does digital video have to do with digital audio??

I can't wait to see what the Creative team has to say about this.

Is there any other audio card with 5.1 DD out via mini plug to coaxial that will truly output DD 5.1 to a receiver and not the proprietary speaker systems associated with it?

I cant believe that the Catalyst drivers would cause such an issue. What does digital video have to do with digital audio??

I can't wait to see what the Creative team has to say about this.

Is there any other audio card with 5.1 DD out via mini plug to coaxial that will truly output DD 5.1 to a receiver and not the proprietary speaker systems associated with it?

I doubt Catalyst would have done it (but who knows).

I uninstalled 5.13 and reinstalled 5.9 with the Catalyst Uninstall utilty and removed the Audigy drivers and installed the 'new' Audigy drivers from the Microsoft website. Still no luck...

MRM, does your motherboard have onboad sound with a digital audio out on it ? You may not even need a soundcard.

...Is there any other audio card with 5.1 DD out via mini plug to coaxial that will truly output DD 5.1 to a receiver and not the proprietary speaker systems associated with it?Yes, M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution71-main.html). It uses a standard RCA coaxial connector for the digital sound output.

Fliper I don't know how you were getting WMV-HD 5.1 sound over your digital port, this has to go over the analog ports unless you use an onboard decoder like AC3Filter. The reason for this is because WMV-HD files use a propritary 5.1 encoding that the receiver will not understand.

If anyone's interested there was a discussion on 5.1 audio in this thread:
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31123&page=2

MRM: Not sure if you tried this or not but PowerDVD also has an option within it to enable/disable the SPDIF port (the audio tab of the configuration menu). You may have to change this as well. I use both optical and analog output on my onboard motherboard to my Yamaha receiver on a regular basis so I may be able to help. The only difference is I use XP not Windows Media Center.

Fliper I don't know how you were getting WMV-HD 5.1 sound over your digital port, this has to go over the analog ports unless you use an onboard decoder like AC3Filter. The reason for this is because WMV-HD files use a propritary 5.1 encoding that the receiver will not understand.

I was getting 5.1 from DD on DVD's, not WMV-HD clips. Sorry if i worded my post poorly.

MRM, go to Start - Control Panel - Sounds And Audio Devices - (it should show your sound card name at the top) - click Advanced - Play Control pops up - click Advanced - Digital Output Only checkbox is at the bottom.

I doubt Catalyst would have done it (but who knows).

I uninstalled 5.13 and reinstalled 5.9 with the Catalyst Uninstall utilty and removed the Audigy drivers and installed the 'new' Audigy drivers from the Microsoft website. Still no luck...

MRM, does your motherboard have onboad sound with a digital audio out on it ? You may not even need a soundcard.

filper,

no, i have an older dell dimension with analog audio onboard. I like the features the SB card provides me. I was told from Creative Labs support that it should work via the way we've been talking about.

Mono mini plug from SB Digital out to Receiver Coax in, set the SPDIF out in the EAX console under Diagnostic tab (I don't have this tab). Then set SPDIF out on the DVD software. It should output DD 5.1 correctly as per Creative's support. I have replied telling them that I don't have that tab available, so I guess they are looking into it. I have also mentioned that I have the latest Catalyst drivers and the vid card im using.

I will post my results when I get a response from them.

Fliper I don't know how you were getting WMV-HD 5.1 sound over your digital port, this has to go over the analog ports unless you use an onboard decoder like AC3Filter. The reason for this is because WMV-HD files use a propritary 5.1 encoding that the receiver will not understand.

If anyone's interested there was a discussion on 5.1 audio in this thread:
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31123&page=2

MRM: Not sure if you tried this or not but PowerDVD also has an option within it to enable/disable the SPDIF port (the audio tab of the configuration menu). You may have to change this as well. I use both optical and analog output on my onboard motherboard to my Yamaha receiver on a regular basis so I may be able to help. The only difference is I use XP not Windows Media Center.

Jimmyface,

actually, i have set it to enable SPDIF out on PowerDVD. I still only get surround effects (echoing) in my FR/FL.. but no sound out of all other channels. Very strange. However I get 2.0 stereo music (ie. MP3/WMA) and regular audio out of my 2 front channels. Any other suggestions?