360 and Audigy 2 ZS Platinum for Surround Sound

[Eomer of Aldburg]

Can I use an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum card with a Digital Audio cable connecting my xbox 360 directly to the drive bay via spdif and the card encode it to the 3 normal analog outputs on the back of to the card for my Z-640's ? Are Digital Audio cables and SPDIF the same? I'm a little confused as you can tell, thanks.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

S/PDIF just stands for Sony/Philips Digital InterFace. There is the CD_SPDIF digital for connecting a CD/DVD drive, and then there are digital audio cables for the coax and optical in/out. The common consumer models are RCA for the coax and Toslink for optical.

A quick google search turned up a thread on the topic Linked

correct. The reason you are not getting 5.1 for your PC is because of EAX. EAX is not utilized with the 360, as it has it's own power to do the audio, thus it is Dolby Digital.

To get Dolby Digital to your speakers, you would have to do SPDIF bypass (one optical cable from 360 to optical in) and then use one optical cable from optical out to either your speakers or a receiver.

That's the only way it can be done through your computer.

So the answer seems to be, no, you must use all S/PDIF to get the sound. Configs are suggested in the thread.