Nice work!

Funny story (I guess), I didn't introduce optical into my home audio at all until retro nudged me there. When I added a Roland SC-D70 to my setup, I saw its optical output, plus the unused input on my bookshelf speakers, and thought why not. Then I thought the TV deserved this love too - but the speakers only have one optical input. Guess what does have a spare input though? The SC-D70. So now I watch movies through a Sound Canvas.

Pierre32 wrote on 2021-12-21, 06:17:

Nice work!

Funny story (I guess), I didn't introduce optical into my home audio at all until retro nudged me there. When I added a Roland SC-D70 to my setup, I saw its optical output, plus the unused input on my bookshelf speakers, and thought why not. Then I thought the TV deserved this love too - but the speakers only have one optical input. Guess what does have a spare input though? The SC-D70. So now I watch movies through a Sound Canvas.

That's good stuff! I have used optical with various DVD/blu-ray players and my Logitech Z-680 speakers over the years but switched everything on my TV to HDMI years and years ago. Right now this setup is the only optical connection in use in my place. Now I want to get another header to use in my XP/Vista machine with it's Audigy 2, but then I'll also need another optical input on this pc...

I've now upgraded to a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS in this machine and the optical pinout is slightly different, for this card I referred to this article:

https://mattgadient.com/optical-spdif-out-on- … aster-audigy-2/

With my GIgabyte brand optical header I put the red wire on +5V, black on ground and brown on spdif0 out.

for the xp machine u might want to look into an x-fi extreme music.

then u can use one of these

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002897561 … .11f34c4dykh1U8

and u get both a optical and Coaxial input and output. and u just plug direct into the digital output on the back of the card unfortunately don't work on Audigy cards other then the later value ones. plus by going x-fi u get full eax 5 support vs only eax 4 with Audigy 2 cards although not a huge list of eax 5 games its nice to know u can do all versions of eax.

aaron158 wrote on 2022-01-26, 01:46:

for the xp machine u might want to look into an x-fi extreme music. […]
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for the xp machine u might want to look into an x-fi extreme music.

then u can use one of these

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002897561 … .11f34c4dykh1U8

and u get both a optical and Coaxial input and output. and u just plug direct into the digital output on the back of the card unfortunately don't work on Audigy cards other then the later value ones. plus by going x-fi u get full eax 5 support vs only eax 4 with Audigy 2 cards although not a huge list of eax 5 games its nice to know u can do all versions of eax.

Good to know that exists!

I ended up getting an SB0770 model X-fi which is apparently some kind of OEM release. It has both optical in and out right on it so might route the audio out of my 98 machine through the XP machine to the startech thing.