Anyone else hook up a digital coax output to the SPDIF on their Abit IP35-E?

[Soundmanred]

I just bought one of these , used a spare two pin mobo connector plugged into the SPDIF header (ground and signal) and soldered the wires to the jack. I then drilled a small hole in my eSATA card bracket, inserted the RCA jack and tightened the nut up.
Hooked it up to my digital coax cable to my reciever, and it works like a charm.
🙂

 

[imported_Scoop]

Nope. I did wish it had a coaxial digital output in itself instead of the optical one since the optical inputs in my A/V reciever are already used up but the coaxial is free. 🙁 But I don't think it'll be worth it to do that since my speaker setup isn't really for the computer.

 

[OLpal]

I hooked my optical spdif to my 6.1 surround , but no sound so far..

Is this what your talking about !!
Can i have my logitech computer spkrs hooked up @ the same time !!???

Ol'Pal 😀

Originally posted by: Soundmanred
I just bought one of these , used a spare two pin mobo connector plugged into the SPDIF header (ground and signal) and soldered the wires to the jack. I then drilled a small hole in my eSATA card bracket, inserted the RCA jack and tightened the nut up.
Hooked it up to my digital coax cable to my reciever, and it works like a charm.
🙂

 

[Soundmanred]

Nope, not the optical, a digital coaxial (RCA style) hooked up to the SPDIF header on the motherboard. My digital coax cable is about 35' long, and hooking up the digital coax was alot cheaper than buying a 35' optical cable! 🙂
If anyone needs help, pics etc, let me know.

 

[Soundmanred]

Here's a pic of the rear of my case with the digital coax out.
Pic Link

 

[bigpow]

Soundmanred,
can you explain the details of "works like a charm"?

5.1? 2.0? What kind of signal is detected by the receiver? Dolby Digital?

 

[Soundmanred]

The reciever (Yamaha RX-V2095) detects Dolby Digital 5.1, I haven't tried DTS as of yet.
I was fooled at first as under the Realtek control panel "test" section (where it goes from speaker to speaker) only the front two make any sound. Maybe it does when using the optical out?
I played a DVD using PowerDVD 8, and need to test it with some files on my hard drive that are DD and DTS. It should just be passthrough for DD/DTS, so it shouldn't be a problem.
I'll report more after a little more testing.
I haven't found any info on the net about all of this, all it talks about is hooking it up to HDMI cards, so hopefully this will help someone.

Edit: DTS works, as well as DVD-Audio. As I said above it should just pass whatever audio comes along (as long as you have the right decoders on your system).

 

[QuixoticOne]

Good job on the modification, though I'd suggest double-checking to see if they use *any* form of ESD protection or electrical isolation on the output circuits on the motherboard.

IIRC "real" IEC-958 gear is often transformer coupled to help prevent ground loop problems, voltage surge problems, et. al. I don't recall that I've ever seen anything looking like a signal coupling transformer on a PC motherboard, though. Many don't even seem to have ESD protection circuits for the USB et. al.

So I'd worry a bit about having a really long cable on that circuit if it is unprotected and going into equipment powered by and grounded through different AC outlet.

Coupling it out through a couple of 0.22uF ceramic capacitors might work; I forget the SPDIF / IEC-958 receiver impedance at the moment. You could add a couple of back to back 5V zener diodes on the MB side of the signal for a little bit of basic surge protection, though you'd probably want something a bit more than that if you'll be walking across carpets and handling the PC / wire / equipment etc.

Originally posted by: Soundmanred
Nope, not the optical, a digital coaxial (RCA style) hooked up to the SPDIF header on the motherboard. My digital coax cable is about 35' long, and hooking up the digital coax was alot cheaper than buying a 35' optical cable! 🙂
If anyone needs help, pics etc, let me know.

 

[bigpow]

well, it's because I only know nforce2 audio was able to encode eveything 5.1 into digital (spdif), resulting in real 5.1 via spdif.
SB and families, don't do so, however - resulting in only stereo via spdif for music, 5.1 from dvd if the source is digital, etc. No analog to digital encoding, basically.