Sound Blaster Zx SPDIF Volume control

Hello, First post so please don't crucify me, but could somebody help me in understanding why I'm not able to adjust the volume when using SPDIF optical out to my Dennon amp on Zx?
What I do not understand is that if I open the Windows 8.1 sound mixer I can adjust the volume for each application? Why not the mixed volume?
Now, I guess the answer is that there is no 'final mix' stage after the sound is send to the sound card from windows and therefore SPDIF is limited when in 'pass thru' mode but really this is just semantics and a driver limitation.. would it be that hard for Creative (or MS) to design the driver or sound subsytem in such a way that the volume could be adjusted in windows rather than on my amp or per application? It seems fairly fundamental and renders my windows remote pretty useless.
Have I misunderstood the situation or is there some other way I can get this to work?

Ok I think this has to be a bug.. I am doing some more investigating and the behaviour of the volume control does not make sense. I have some screenshots below, its hard to explain but hopefully I can manage to do so!
In the first scenario, changing the speaker volume up and down does NOT change the volume coming from the speakers, as you move the main Speaker volume slider the Application sliders move up and down but do not change.. example
Vol at 50% from speakers..
vol1.jpg
Move main slider down, NO CHANGE, note that application slider is changing but still not changing output volume (even though changing application slider with mouse does work)
vol2png.jpg
Change volume of application and suddenly volume changes to louder
vol3.jpg
Again going back and turning main slider down doesnt change the volume...
So you can get to a situation where the volume for the application says very low and its actually blaring out, then just clicking on the slider suddenly drops the volume.
This has to be a bug? Does anyone else have the same behaviour as this?
Attached Images
vol1.jpg
(9.4 KB, 2 views)

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Originally Posted by kromastorm
I have Dell XPS laptop, with windows 8.1 pro 64 bit installed. All software and drivers are set for auto update. I bought sound blaster xfi mb3 audio enhancement software in Jan 2015. It was working fine till last 2 month back. I did not notice it at first but the volume control stopped working. I used to decrease the sound system's volume to compensate that. Then after a week I understood that this is because the volume is not working. I checked it out, and found that realtek driver was getting the sound instead of sound blaster driver. I am getting the enhanced sound output though. But for volume, I have to reduce it from realtek volume control,I enabled it from volume mixer. Here are the snaps of the options:
issue_snap1.jpgissue_snap2.jpg
I have raised the issue with creative team, but they were not able to find the issue. I just want to know which software is having issue, is it the OS or the XFi MB3...
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Hi kromastorm,
It's hard to tell but based on the snap shots, it seems that the volume controls of the Realtek and X-Fi MB3 are not in sync. Under normal condition, the volume levels should be in sync.
Suggest that you uninstall the X-Fi MB3 first; follow by the Realtek driver. Download and install the latest Realtek driver before reinstalling back the X-Fi MB3 software. I reckon there are software updates that may interfere with the software behaviour; so be sure to disable any background programs before proceeding.
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