Kofi Annan in: " S/PDIF-in' "

[Kofi Annan]

OK, I don't hang around the digital forum much (in fact, this is my first post here), but I recently got my hands on a Soundblaster Audigy 4 sound card with what purports to be a "Digital I/O" that can handle an S/PDIF in.

So I'm trying to play a few DTS CDs on my DVD player and S/PDIF the signal from the DVD player into the card and I get nuthin. Zip. Nada. I'm sending the signal via coax from the digital out on the DVD player to a headphone-style plug on the Audigy.

The analog in on regular CDs works fine if I connect to the line in on the card, but I can't get the S/PDIF to work and I think it should.

Now, I know that this isn't the greatest sound card in the world and all, but I just bought it to play with and not being able to play with it makes Kofi mad.

So, I'm thinking that someone on the digital forum may have some experience with this, hence the questions:

1. What am I doing wrong?

2. Could it be that the DVD player doesn't recognize that its a digital signal and wont output it?

3. Is there some trick to letting the sound card know that S/PDIF is coming in (I've tried almost everything here, but feel free to advise)?

I know that I could just play these discs on my PC CD-ROM, but I have a problem with them pausing during playback to speed up / slow down and it annoys the excrement out of me.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Really. Just ask. I'll appreciate it. I was voted Most Appreciative Member of DIYAudio in 2004.

Thanks in advance.

Kofi

[jacco vermeulen]

Originally posted by Kofi Annan
I was voted Most Appreciative Member of DIYAudio in 2004.

Small wonder, Mr born on Friday Annan.

[Coolin]

I'm not sure but i thought i read something about the dig. out on PC CD and maybe DVD as well not sending S/PDIF but something else ? ...

[astouffer]

The soundcard thats built into my motherboard has software that lets you choose the input/output. S/PDIF is not enabled by default.

[kexik]

do you have standard drivers for your audigy, or KX project ones? perhaps KX ones are better idea, they allow more detailed routing. and remember, that audigy core works on 48kHz and src quality is very poor with this card... anyway, i think guys are true, you have most probably just disabled spdif in, or its "fader" in mixer is set to 0?
by the way, film dvds are using ac3 audio stream, which differs from spdif format, although the interface can transfer it. may be this is the problem?

[DragonMaster]

First in the Windows mixer, unmute and raise the volume of the proper input.

Try with regular CDs first to see if it works.

If not, you have to enable the decoding in the Windows control panel. I think it's somewhere in the AudioHQ panel. There is one of them that allows you to choose if you want to put "spdif passthru", enable DTS, Dolby Digital, etc.

[sangram]

SPDIF pass through is for SPDIF output.

You have to unmute the SPDIF input first.

I'm not sure if the Audigy Digital input is a regular kind of input. The phone style plug at the back has a specific kind of pinout (it's actually a stereo RCA and I think it carries input and output) and I think Creative sells the adaptor as an add-on. The internal bus connector allows you to feed in a digital input using a normal RCA style coax socket, but some soldering is required.

Also I am not sure the coax input allows you to decode Dolby/DTS, only regular PCM audio, the Dolby decoding is reserved for data off the internal I2S bus. DTS is anyway done by the software.

Some places do do research would be:

http://pinouts.ru

www.homerecording.com/bbs

[DragonMaster]

Control Panel,
AudioHQ,
Device Control,
Decoder,
Use installed decoder.