Creative (Cambridge) FPS 2000 Digital Speakers - SPDIF?

[SpideyCU]

If you're familiar at all with these speakers, their digital connection is (I believe) a proprietary Creative one, the port for which is only available on SB Live! cards. It is a 9 pin digital DIN (not an AC3 SPDIF cable). There's also an adapter included with the speakers to make it connect to a standard 3.5 mm jack (which I know is available on some other SB Live! cards, but I'm not sure about anything else). Has anyone ever made this work for generic SPDIF connections? Specifically I'm wondering about the SPDIF pins available on some nForce2 mobos (Epox 8RDA+ in my case). I'd really like to get a digital connection going, if only to free up my line-in port, but I haven't been able to find a diagram for the pins.

If anyone's had experience connecting these things to something other than some variants of an SB Live! card, please let me know. I'm fairly clueless when it comes to Creative's "special" brand of SPDIF connections.

 

[SpideyCU]

No one around here has wondered about this or tried anything about it? I guess Creative proprietary connections aren't popular.

 

[SpideyCU]

Probably the last time I'm bumping in hopes of someone seeing this who knows what I'm talking about.

 

[Accord99]

I don't think this connector is really proprietary, as much as it is uncommon outside of Creative hardware (supposedly the flagship Denon 5803 receiver supports it but then it costs much more than most computer systems). What it does is allow multiple SPDIF streams to be passed over a single cable, the early Lives is capable of outputing 4 channels of digital audio, with the Live 5.1 and Audigy series outputting 3 SPDIF streams, allowing for 5.1 digital, uncompressed audio. To this day, its the only inexpensive method of transmitting 5.1 channels of uncompressed audio.

If the NForce uses a 1/8" minijack jack for digital output, then you should be able to get the front channels using the Creative cable and adapter. If the NForce uses the standard RCA connector, than you would need some adapter to get to a minijack, and I'm not sure if it would work. Regardless, at best you would only be able to the front channel audio only. For surround audio from games, DVDs, etc. you would need to use analog connections.

 

[SpideyCU]

Thanks for the info Accord. Obviously, I was unaware of that, even after doing some Googling in my spare time.

My motherboard didn't come with an SPDIF bracket, just the pins on the motherboard itself to connect to a jack that I could order separately. I'm unsure what type of connector this bracket would be, hence wondering if I could rig some kind of connection directly. But anyway, if all I could hope for would be front audio, that'd defeat the purpose since I could free up my Line-In port (currently being used as output for rear analog audio) by merely using the front audio line from the analog side.

Much obliged for the answer, this clears up some things I was wondering about. I owe ya one.