Clear up a question about Live 5.1 card outputs?

[The Dancing Peacock]

Buying an OEM Live 5.1 card. I want to know what the outputs look like on the back of the card. I have a Dolby Digital Receiver and want to output MP3's and stuff to it from my computer. I did a search on S/PDIF here and elsewhere, and can you just connect an RCA from the Soundcard to the receiver, or do you need a special optical cable, like I have from the DVD to the receiver?

Thanks.


TDP

 

[Noriaki]

There are two types of cable for an SPDIF interface.
There is Optical and Electrical (aka Coax, uses an RCA cable).

The SBLive 5.1 uses an Electrical/Coaxial SPDIF connection.
The actually connector on the SBLive is a 3.5mm minijack though, so you need a 3.5mm minijack to Coax converter (you can get them at radio shack, either a mono-minijack to single RCA or stereo-minijack to dual RCA and just use one the tip connector one).

Once you have this converted plugged into the Yellow jack on your live, you set it to digital-out and then connect the RCA plug to the Coaxial Digital input on your Reciever.

This connection can carry a 2 channel PCM signal or a 5.1 encoded Dolby Digital signal.