Soundblaster 5.1 Live MP3 soundcard ??? (1 Viewer)

[Mitch Stevens]

Hi Everyone,

I did a search, but couldn't come up with anything that was useful to me.

I have the above soundcard (from the title of this thread) and I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to use the digital output of the soundcard.

It came with no documentation at all, and no cables. I have a 5.1 DD/DTS receiver, with 2 coax inputs (one of which my DVD player is using) and 2 optical inputs (one of which my CD player is using).

Anyway, I'd like to hook up this soundcard using a digital connection. There are 5 holes in the back of the soundcard.

(1) L/R Surround Speakers
(2) L/R Main Speakers
(3) Microphone
(4) Line In
(5) Digital

I have tried every way I could possibly think of, and bought many, MANY cables, but ended up returning all of them, because I could not figure out how to get the digital output to work.

Can anyone explain in VERY easy to understand terms, which cables I need, (PICTURES WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL). Which settings should I use for the computer?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Brian Ruth]

Mitch:

I did some quick looking on the Sound Blaster site, and the part I THOUGHT you needed apparently isn't there.

Essentially, you need a miniplug-to-RCA or miniplug-to-optical converter that will convert the digital stream from the digital jack into surround sound. I THOUGHT Creative would provide this for you, but that apparently is not the case.

The least expensive solution I can see is the Digital IO board, which will take up one PCI opening on the back of your computer. It SEEMS that this board has a breakout box for digital connections that would allow you to connect an optical or coax directly to the breakout box without any extra cables.

As somewhat of a side note, I read an article recently that Texas Instruments and Dolby are co-developing a FireWire-to-coax converter. It probably won't street for a few more months, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

 

[Joe D]

I don't have that particular card, but I have a similar card from Sound Blaster.

Software wise:
You need to go to the audio speaker button that's located on the bottom right of the destop by the time button, click on it, go to the advanced options under play control and select digital output only.

Hardware wise:

You need a male mono mini plug to female RCA plug adaptor that gets plugged into the digital ouput of your sound card, then run a normal 75 OHM video cable from the adaptor to your Receiver's digital RCA input. If you don't have an RCA input, then you need buy an adaptor to convert the signal to an optical cable.

Hopefully this helps.

 

[Daniel Alan]

Joe is right, that is the way to get the digital to work, BUT.....

There is a problem with many of the earlier SB live!s, their digital out is out of spec, and so most recievers cannot make sense of the digital out. I wanted to do the same thing, but when I used a coax cable with a miniplug adaptor, it didn't work. This problem is pretty widespread, check out the AVS forums.

sorry.

 

[Mitch Stevens]

Joe,

Will an RCA cord even work with a coax connection? I'll look for it at radio shack.

 

[Matt Weyen]

I use a 3.5mm headphone jack (MONO!) to RCA coax adapter and it works fine and mine is an older soundblaster. I transfer everything from dts and dd to mp3's with it, but I did NOT load any of the soundblaster software because I had many more problems with it loaded.