Got a new Creative Sound Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro Card! need some help setting it up

[btdvox]

Hey guys im having some trouble with my Sound blaster card, I have inputted it all correctly but there are some questions i have, I will list them!

1. Im tryin to hook up my home theatre system, I have an optical cable going to the out of the External I/O but i dont know how to Switch it to that, what i want to do is to listen to music and play my games in Digital using my home Theatre system!

2. when installing into my computer, They asked to hook it up to the S/PDIF and the aux out to my DVD-Rom and CD rom but for somereason my DVD rom only has the aux out (analog) and my CD rom has the digital S/PDIF does this mean i wont be able to listen to DVD audio? Also I had the Dvd ROM aux inputted into my mobo (im guessing it was to be connected to the onboard sound driver, so i just switched it to the Audigy 2 ZS card. let me know if that is right!

Sorry if i didnt give enough info about number 1. Im pretty new to hooking stuff up bymyself!
thanks

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

First of all, was your intention to get surround sound through a digital signal to your receiver?

The best you're going to get out of the vast majority or cards is going to be 7 channel stereo or Prologic mode on your receiver because most digital cards are only going to output PCM stereo in games. The SB will only give a DD surround signal when something has already been encoded for it (a DVD). A game is dynamic and you need to encode it to DD in real time if you want surround sound.

There are two cards I know of that do this.
The X-Mystique (Which I have hooked up to my Pioneed 1014 to my Onix Rocket Ultra 550HT and SVS PB-10ISD)
or
Turtle Beach's new DDL option.

Any other digital cards are only going to get you stereo output from gaming.

Ok, so on to the other questions....

Do you have the External I/O box connected to your soundcard with that cable they give you? (I've never owned a card with an I/O box, so I'm not too familiar with problems with it). Check the manual to see if it is supposed to output all the time or if you need to switch to it in your sound utility program... (like switch from analog to a Digital signal). If it's working, there will be a red dot in the middle of the output from the box.... not to say that the light is a sufficient condition to tell you it's working...

For DVDs, the sound can be transmitted through the IDE cable, it wont be a problem using it without a little cable connecting to the card (unless the I/O box and SB combo functions differently from a normal soundcard).

You shouldn't need any cables other than the IDE cables running from your optical drives.

Let me know if any of this helped or if you need any more help.

 

[Oyeve]

A few games are actually encoded with Dolby digital (very few). I believe the spdif from DVD to soundcard is no longer needed. I use the digital out from my sound card to my 7.1 receiver and get real DD decoding from movies and the handful of games that have DD sound and do not have the internal spdif connected to anything in my system.

 

[minerman]

1. Im tryin to hook up my home theatre system, I have an optical cable going to the out of the External I/O but i dont know how to Switch it to that, what i want to do is to listen to music and play my games in Digital using my home Theatre system!


Go to your start menu and open all programs, then go to Creative-->Sound Blaster-->Audio Console-->Open the decoder tab and check SPDIF Passthrough or uncheck use Build-in Decoder.
You may also have to open your speaker settings in Creative software and check "digital output only" but that shouldn't be necessary.

As yoyo said just use your ide cables and don't worry about hooking up the small analog and digital connections they are not needed.

Also go in your Bios and disable your onboard sound card.

Hope this helps.

 

[btdvox]

Hi there i play alot of games that say dolby digital on the front, and the ones that dont, and on the box it has CMSS which makes 2.1 go into 5.1 .Anyways I really wanted to use the sound card for EAX on my games i play WoW, Doom3, BF2, Unreal 2004 a bunch of games that said it would work! EAX will work on the home theatre if i use CMSS also right?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: btdvox
Hi there i play alot of games that say dolby digital on the front, and the ones that dont, and on the box it has CMSS which makes 2.1 go into 5.1 .Anyways I really wanted to use the sound card for EAX on my games i play WoW, Doom3, BF2, Unreal 2004 a bunch of games that said it would work! EAX will work on the home theatre if i use CMSS also right?

Not as 5.1 with a digital cable. Creative cards don't support "Dolby Live" real-time 5.1 digital encoding of game audio.

If you use the 5.1 analog input to your stereo and 3 miniplug-to-2-RCA cables an analog connection will give you real 5.1 surround.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: btdvox
Hi there i play alot of games that say dolby digital on the front, and the ones that dont, and on the box it has CMSS which makes 2.1 go into 5.1 .Anyways I really wanted to use the sound card for EAX on my games i play WoW, Doom3, BF2, Unreal 2004 a bunch of games that said it would work! EAX will work on the home theatre if i use CMSS also right?

Not as 5.1 with a digital cable. Creative cards don't support "Dolby Live" real-time 5.1 digital encoding of game audio.

If you use the 5.1 analog input to your stereo and 3 miniplug-to-2-RCA cables an analog connection will give you real 5.1 surround.

Check your receiver before you try to hook up with analog. Your receiver has to support 6 (or 8) channel direct input.

The X-Mystique supports EAX 2.0, I'm not sure about the Turtle Beach card.

 

[btdvox]

what? your saying if i dont use the optical out or coax out i cant get Dolby digital? that makes no sense lol. And what do you mean 3 miniplug to 2 RCA on the configurations demo it shows a Digtal out using a RCA to Miniplug to the coax out of the Reciever, and then it will recieve Dolby Digital like any other DVD player. But waht i want to do is use the Optical outs instad of the digital out since optical is digital also. but i turned off the onboard audio and i still hear nothing?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: btdvox
what? your saying if i dont use the optical out or coax out i cant get Dolby digital? that makes no sense lol. And what do you mean 3 miniplug to 2 RCA on the configurations demo it shows a Digtal out using a RCA to Miniplug to the coax out of the Reciever, and then it will recieve Dolby Digital like any other DVD player. But waht i want to do is use the Optical outs instad of the digital out since optical is digital also. but i turned off the onboard audio and i still hear nothing?

No, I'm saying if you do use optical or coax digital you will not get 5.1 surround for games, unless the game has it's own code to encode Dolby.

A game that doesn't specifically say that it does its own dolby encoding (that just has normal surround) will just send normal audio data to the soundcard, and the soundcard itself will not encode it to dolby 5.1 it will only send surround sound to the analog out jacks.

This doesn't apply to DVDs because they have dolby 5.1 pre-encoded on the disc and the soundcard just "passes through" the pre-encoded signal.

 

[btdvox]

hey thanks man, so today i bought some cables, i bought 3 RCA (stereo) to miniplug and one miniplug to mono RCA (for the digital) i get what you said, so now i have a huge problem, the cables i got wont fit all three of them on the card, like i put on of them in then the second one wont budge in because the cables end is kind of fat...anyways i guess ill have to go find new ones, My question is if i get them do they have to be stereo? can it be miniplug into two mono rca cables? and Secondly when i get that running into the 6 ch input in my reciever how can i find out if im running dolby digital and dts in dvd's ? using the internal decoder?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

They have to be stereo.

A miniplug to two rca cables will work fine (that's what I was using about a year ago).

 

[Tiamat]

I would just use analog connections. Removes one of the Analog to Digital conversions.

That is assuming your receiver has analog in.

 

[btdvox]

hey yeah my reciever does, but i have a problem the set of RCA's i bought were too big for the platinum pros PCI card like the holes arent spread out enough for these, what should i do? and how can i figure out if im running dolby digital using my platinum pro?

 

[btdvox]

anyone?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: btdvox
hey yeah my reciever does, but i have a problem the set of RCA's i bought were too big for the platinum pros PCI card like the holes arent spread out enough for these, what should i do? and how can i figure out if im running dolby digital using my platinum pro?

For #1, buy smaller cables or get busy with a hobby knife to shave away some plastic?

For #2, if you use analog outs, you aren't using dolby digital (a compressed encoding format used to send audio over a digital cable) you're just using 5.1 surround sound. How to you know if you have surround sound? It's somewhere in the Creatvie mass o' applications (SB Mixer? Control Panel?) and you also may need to go into the settings screen for games to tell them to use 4- or 5-channel surround.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: btdvox
hey yeah my reciever does, but i have a problem the set of RCA's i bought were too big for the platinum pros PCI card like the holes arent spread out enough for these, what should i do? and how can i figure out if im running dolby digital using my platinum pro?

The outputs on the PCI card aren't RCA size, you need 1/8" minijacks to stereo RCA cables.