SB Live! - SPDIF digital outs

[Big G]

All,

I have an old Sounblaster Live, the one with the daughtercard that has the SPDIF in/out, digital DIN and midi in/outs.

The card does everything i need it to do, except have an onboard dolby digital decoder (but it suppots live surround, and quadrophonic speakers).

My question is, can i use the SPDIF digital out from the SB Live into an AV receiver/amp which in turn will decode a 5.1 (or AC3?) signal and then output to a 5.1 speaker system?

Someone help

Gaz

 

[FatBusinessman]

I should think so, yes.

However, one thing to bear in mind is that Sound Blaster cards cannot encode a SP-DIF signal, so you won't get SP-DIF out from music, games etc. - only from DVD movies. The only consumer hardware currently around that will encode a SP-DIF signal (to my knowledge) is an nForce/nForce2 motherboard.

(Note: I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think that's the current situation. Could someone perhaps clarify?)

 

[Big G]

Fantastic, that saves me buying a new soundcard.

So i take it cards like the Audigy, SB Live 5.1, nForce and nForce2 all have dolby digital 5.1 decoding actually on the card and can therefore select "6 channel (5.1)" in windows media player, as opposed to myself who can only select stereo or "Enable S/PDIF output".

That S/PDIF presumably connects to an AV receiver/amp (which contains all the dolby digital 5.1 decoding) via a coaxial digital in ?

Gaz

 

[FatBusinessman]

from the Sound Blaster website:
with Creative's Sound Blaster Live!, Sound Blaster Audigy®, Sound Blaster® Extigy and Sound Blaster Audigy® 2, you will now be able to enjoy Dolby Digital decoding without any additional hardware

So yes, that would seem to be the case.

And yes, I believe the SP/DIF connects to the digital co-ax in of your receiver.

 

[GDW]

Make sure you also enable the SPDIF setting in your DVD software programme e.g in Power DVD go to configuration>audio tab>set audio output to enable SPDIF.

If you dont set this you wont get 5.1

Good Luck

 

[Big G]

Cheers for the help.

I also found this:

http://dmzweb3.europe.creative.com/htmlhelp/audio/sblive/sblive_ac3dd12.htm

Which answers the question too.

Gaz