Digital-out audio on DVD-ROM

[yellowperil]

My setup is

Raite 8x DVD-ROM
Aureal Vortex2 Superquad with optical S/PDIF
Yamaha DD/DTS speakers with optical inputs

I'm trying to figure out how to get the best DVD sound out of the system. I noticed my DVD-ROM has a 2-pin digital audio jack in the back, and I believe my Vortex2 also has this jack (though please correct me if I'm wrong). Do I need this connection to pass the AC-3 signal through the optical out, or will it be sent through the IDE cable? Thanks

 

[bacillus]

the signal will use the IDE cable!

 

[aGeNt73]

Through the ide cable

 

[Maverick]

it'll go through the IDE cable.
That digital cable you're looking at it simply an alternative to the analog cable for CD Audio. These days its not even needed. As for DVD, you need a PCM stream to come out of the sound card. Not sure if your card does it, but I know the SB Live! Value and the Phillips Acoustic Edge can do it. Just hook that up to the coax input on your Yamaha receiver (if you don't have one I think you can pick up a coax -> optical adapter. Good luck.

 

[yellowperil]

Thanks for the help guys. I looked at the Vortex2 and I was wrong, apparently there's no 2-pin jack (or I didn't look close enough, that may be possible since I didn't take it out). I looked at the Aureal setup, the highest output rate is 48kHz. Isn't DVD audio 96kHz? It doesn't give me an option to select Dolby Digital like the Help file suggests. Hmm...anyone own this card and can help me figure this out?

 

[Mears]

Are you guys saying that cd-audio cables aren't needed?

 

[hifimaster]

Windows media player 7 plays cd audio through the ide cable.

 

[Mears]

so what exactly are cd audio cables for or do some things still use them?

 

[Noriaki]

The CD audio cable sends CD Audio to your soundcard, it does the same thing it's always done, there is just an option in Win98SE/ME/2k to send the CD audio data through IDE. If you want to use that function then you don't need the CD audio cable.

yellowperil:

You do not need the 2pin internal SPDIF cable, that is for CD Audio as well.

What you need to do is hook up the digital (or optical) cable from your soundcard to your speakers. All audio is sent from the DVDRom to the soundcard, then you get a software DVD player and in the software's control panel you select the Dolby Digital Passthrough mode (it may be called Dolby Passthrough, SPDIF Passthrough or AC-3 Passthrough, all 3 mean pretty much the same thing).

Once that is done your soundcard should send the SPDIF signal onto the speakers. You may need to select dolby digital mode or something on the speakers. Then you should be blessed will full 5.1 channel dobly digital sound

Note: As of now AC-3 passthrough does not work in Windows 2000. Only 98/ME. There is apperntly a hotfix for this (search the OS forum) and SP2 is suppose to fix it...but if you are in Win2k and having trouble that's why.

Win98/ME it should be easy as pie.

 

[yellowperil]

I'm having another (possibly unrelated problem) playing analog CD audio. When I play CD audio through WMP7 or Winamp everything seems to be working but there is no sound coming out of my speakers. If I switched to Digital Audio in WMP7 I could get sound, but I know it's bypassing the problem, plus I don't want to use up CPU cycles with digital audio. The problem seems to have occurred after upgrading my Vortex2 to the 2048 reference drivers. The analog cable is connected between my DVD-ROM and Vortex2, I'm unable to locate the source of the problem. It may be because the Vortex2 is outputting through S/PDIF now instead of Line Out.

Messing with the EQ's, I finally got WMP7 to play analog audio after doing:

Start -> Control Panel -> Aureal Vortex Audio -> Digital Out/EQ -> and selecting CD-ROM from the drop down menu under analog EQ channel. Winamp still won't play analog audio.



BTW, thanks to all for the help, I'm not having any trouble getting DD5.1 sound