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[email protected] skybuck2000@hotmail.com is offline
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Default Creative X-Fi Elite Pro Breakout Box SPDIF/Optical OUT to Denon 1909Receiver Optical IN not working ?

Hello,

Today I bought an SPDIF-optical/TOS link cable to experiment with soundblaster to receiver audio processing options.

The idea is to use creative labs audio processing from x-fi in combination with denon receiver audio processing to see what the ultimate effect/output/sound would be like.

However I am having difficulties getting it working.

It seems the SPDIF out is MUTED ?!?

When I run the test software as follows:

1. Launch creative console

2. Launch THX setup via it or directly via pop-up menu

Below it is an icon that looks like a speaker with a plus above it.

This is "creative diagnostics"

During "mixer settings check" it displays:

Master MUTE
Wave checked
Midi checked
Soundbank checked

(It also does some driver analysis).

So the results of this check is weird.

For normal/analog output the master is not muted and everything is fine.

When switching to SPDIF/out via volume control panel of windows the master seems to be MUTED ?!?!

Why is this ?

I have never used SPDIF/optical/tos link before so I am not sure what is normally supposed to happen.

Is it suppose to detect signals automatically and if not it auto-mutes ?

I tried all kinds of input modes on the receiver, but nothing seems to work.

The toslink cable is 5 meters. Perhaps it's too long ?

I did see a faint red light shine through it... perhaps the cable is of bad quality.

I will take it to a store later on to test it out in that store if they can to see if it will work or not Hopefully they can help with testing... not sure if they can though.

I think it's probably not the cable.

Especially since the software displays "MUTED".

In volume control panel it does not appear muted... I tried reverse it by muting it... that also does not work...

The master volume stays muted in windows according to this test.

What I could try is re-install all drives but I'd rather not do that.

I also tried experimenting with creative alchemy to see if that will allow directx directsound processing in world of warships to be done by the creative labs audio processors in the hopes that the game can run ultra sound mode on my system.

First test was low performance cause svchost.exe was consuming 50% cpu after reboot cause of alchemy installation so later will try again to see if world of warships can benefit from alchemy software... I already added it manually to it.

For now I would like to get SPDIF/optical working cause I am curious what kind of audio processing options might be available on the receiver if it uses optical in.

I also installed zoom player... but so far no luck.. perhaps additional audio codecs are needed... though I believe theoretically spdif/tos link should also be able to simply play stereo sound via pcm/direct or so ?

windows 7 has dts audio and dolby digital available for spdif out.

Though I believe the denon receiver is capable of processing many different formats.

If the basic audio test of windows 7 is not working then I don't think install extra software is going to help much.... zoom player for example... probably not gonna help much... though I will continue experimenting a little bit with it.

Perhaps installing something special so that more audio codecs become available might help ?!

But for now it seems to be some kind of weird MUTE problem ?!

Ofcourse maybe the breakout box is defective... the led light failed for main volume or something... but everything else seems to work.

Perhaps SPDIF out was disabled in driver to fix some weird driver problem by creative or so ?!

So any ideas why the master volume seems to be muted according to this test ?!?

I could try a different operating system...

Perhaps Linux Mint, though I kinda nuked my dvd drive a little bit...

Laptop does not have spdif out so testing with that is unfortunately not possible.

Running a different operating system seems an interesting idea for this particular test... not sure if linux/mint supports spdif optical and such.

This OS test might shine some more light on if it's a hardware or software problem. If linux mint does work via SPDIF/TOS then it's some kind of windows software problem.

Bye for now,
Skybuck.