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"S/PDIF Audio"

I want to connect my speakers up using the S/PDIF sport just under the keyboard and mouse input (sorry i'm not very technically minded!). At the moment they are working through my soundcard (Creative SoundBlaster Live Dohicky) using a 3.5mm audio cable but the quality is rubbish. I tried just using the coaxial cable and taking out the old lead and switching it about but no sound. Do i have to tell the computer to use the S/PDIF port? If so how? Even if this does this work will the sound quality be any better? Thanks for your help.

Don't worry about the midi port as long as the AC '97 onboard is enabled.

Now you need to install the drivers and utilities to make it work (they should have come on a disk/CD with your motherboard) failing that simply [URL]http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/selectftp.aspx?l1_id=1&l2_id=20&l3_id=1&m_id=2&f_name=WDM_3663.zip~zaqwedc[/URL] and download the latest driver, this should also install an audio control panel which will give you full control over the onboard sound...

Thanks for that tigamilla, uninstalled the sound card but in the bios how do activate the onboard sound. There are 2 options which i think it could be: Onboard AC '97 Audio (which is already enabled) or onboard MIDI Port (when i click on this i have the choice of selecting an 'address' of 300 or 330). Then when i do this how do i load up the onboard sound utilities/drivers and set it to output to the S/PDIF port. Thanks very much for your help and once again i apologise for my lack of knowledge in any subject!

P.S. By the way have an ASUS K8V mobo if that's any help

If you are still using your Sound blaster card,I think you might need to first of all uninstall it and then re-activate the onboard sound through the BIOS. Then load up the onboard sound utilities/drivers and set it to output to the S/PDIF port...

It does go to a decoder first but i still cant get any sound. I've used the speakers before with the fibre optic output (with my xbox) but there's no where fibre optic port anywhere on my computer. Darn these evil wires :-(

Nitram wrote:
> I want to connect my speakers up using the S/PDIF sport just under the
> keyboard and mouse input (sorry i'm not very technically minded!).
> At the moment they are working through my soundcard (Creative
> SoundBlaster Live Dohicky) using a 3.5mm audio cable but the quality
> is rubbish. I tried just using the coaxial cable and taking out the
> old lead and switching it about but no sound. Do i have to tell the
> computer to use the S/PDIF port? If so how? Even if this does this
> work will the sound quality be any better? Thanks for your help.

S/PDIF is a digital out port similar to optical. This doesn't work on it's own! So hooking up speakers to it doesn't work.

You need to go from the S/PDIF out to a Decoder (normally 5.1) then to speakers as the decoder is needed to seperate/transform the signal from the S/PDIF out.

And yes, it's worth it for the sound difference/quality

I want to connect my speakers up using the S/PDIF sport just under the keyboard and mouse input (sorry i'm not very technically minded!). At the moment they are working through my soundcard (Creative SoundBlaster Live Dohicky) using a 3.5mm audio cable but the quality is rubbish. I tried just using the coaxial cable and taking out the old lead and switching it about but no sound. Do i have to tell the computer to use the S/PDIF port? If so how? Even if this does this work will the sound quality be any better? Thanks for your help.