Trouble getting SPDIF with Xi-Fi Xtreme Audio

Question

-Trouble getting SPDIF with Xi-Fi Xtreme Audio? Hey guys,
I'm going crazy here, bought today a <span class="smallColor8">Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-Express, the idea was to go toslink from card digital out to my receiver and to bitstream dolby digital and DTS... as I said that was the idea...
<span class="smallColor8">First problem, the CD was broken, no biggie went to the website and got myself the drivers - XFXA_PCDRV_LB__04_0000.exe? I installed that, rebooted and was welcomed by the updater application, I went to check what was there and most of it seems unecessary, I found a bit strange that it was telling me I needed the file I just installed, but I selected everything that was critical and launched the +250mb update (yuck) and I was very happy to see it was downloading at 30kbps (...)
<span class="smallColor8">After installing all that and rebooting I went in the control pannel to look for the SPDIF option but couldn't find anything relevant so went to read the manual and the first thing it says is click the decoder tab... and well I don't have a decoder tab, it's simply not there...
<span class="smallColor8">I thought I made a mistake, so I uninstalled everything, by the way this thing is a freaking nightmare to uninstall properly and this time went step by step making sure I wasn't missng a point and guess what I spent another 2 hour downloading at year 992 speeds, but got to the very same result, the decoder tab is not here.
<span class="smallColor8">So far it has been very frustrating but I'm some of you guys will make it all ok with a simple fix :P
<span class="smallColor8">I run windows XP SP3, already gave you sound card I use and driver I downloaded, If you need anything else just ask, I'll be around
<span class="smallColor8">Thx

Answer 1

Cr4P wrote:
First you talk about DAC, this is precisely what I'm trying to avoid, this is a 50$ card, I have a 7'000$ receiver I obviously want the digital to analog conversion to be done by the receiver, same goes for the decoding, actually I never expected a card this cheap to decode anything, I just want it to send the digital sound bit per bit (or bitstream) to receiver, it will do the DAC and Dolby/DTS decoding and of course it will do it much better
A card with a 48kHz-only DAC, that also puts out SPDIF, will put out 48kHz SPDIF in sync with the input, which means unless audio operations are attempted on a 48kHz encoding before it is sent to the card, which will destroy the encoding, it will be passed through without alteration.
The specs on the card's DACs don't look that bad. I for one wouldn't assume that those functions on your receiver are going to be that much better, and Dolby/DTS decoding is either done right or doesn't work at all. If I were you, I'd do a comparison test before making that particular assumption.
So what you're saying is simply using the card even though I don't see anything related to SPDIF should be enough and applications will take care of the bitstream, I use AC3filter with reclock and indeed I can select the audio device, but it ain't working at all.
There may be a problem with the AC3filter/ReClock combination. To check this, you could try playing a DVD with an "ordinary" player that has an SPDIF output selection.
When you say it ain't working at all, what exactly is happening?
BTW, if you are using AC3filter to make AC3 on the fly, you are probably doing extra encoding/decoding steps using a lossy encoding just to use your receiver's decoder, to which I personally would prefer using the card's analog outs connected to a receiver's multichannel inputs, unless comparison testing unexpectedly demonstated the extra encoding sounded better to me.
You keep saying this *basic card*, I was under the impression that creative was only doing basic card, if there's another model that will work out of the box to bitstream digital sound, please give me the reference number, I'll be happy to throw this card out my window and get one that works
An audio cable can do DD/DTS passthrough. Like a cable, your card is simple enough that its hardware will do passthough if fed a valid 48kHz encoding. CL's smarter cards have onboard mixing and use hardware sample-rate-conversion techniques any of which can destroy an encoding. These cards have to be put in a special mode which bypasses all that to accomplish passthrough successfully because by default they will destroy encodings.
-Dave
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