Does This Cable Exist??

[bdub]

I need a 4-pole Miniplug connector, which would connect to my Audigy 2ZS, and on the other end a Digital Coaxial Connector to connect with (http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=15-1228 ), which would then be able to send an Optical signal to my receiver. Does anyone know of such a cable. The text below is part of an e-mail I sent to Creative.

Thanks,
Brandon

Option 1:
I need a cable to go from my Audigy's Digital Out miniplug connection to connect to my Sony
receiver's Optical In connection. Your website has no such cable, and I don't believe
anyone else does because it'd be impossible to transform the Digital Out's non-optical
signal to Optical without some device like this.

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=15-1228

Option 2:
The product that I just linked you too can turn a Digital Coaxial cable's signal into
Optical that my receiver needs. So in this situation, I'd need a 4-pole miniplug connector
to a Coaxial connector cable. Which I believe don't exist anywhere either.

Option 3:
I was looking at the Optical Digital I/O II, which would solve all my problems, but of
course it's not compatiable with my Audigy 2ZS card....

 

[Pariah]

You still appear to be completely confused as to what you need here, despite the last thread you posted on this. You don't need a 4 pole cable for anything digital. Only if you planned to use analog out. And the cables do exist, as I own one. There are commonly bundled with camcorders. All you need is a standard mini-rca cable (stereo or mono) like this one:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F007%5F002%5F003%5F009&product%5Fid=42%2D2483

Either the red or white, don't remember which plugs into the adapter you posted above, and the mini plugs into the Audigy card. Then you plug a TOS cable from the adapter to your receiver.

I wish the Creative tech guy luck who has to decipher what you sent him.

 

[bdub]

Originally posted by: Pariah
You still appear to be completely confused as to what you need here, despite the last thread you posted on this. You don't need a 4 pole cable for anything digital. Only if you planned to use analog out. And the cables do exist, as I own one. There are commonly bundled with camcorders. All you need is a standard mini-rca cable (stereo or mono) like this one:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F007%5F002%5F003%5F009&product%5Fid=42%2D2483

Either the red or white, don't remember which plugs into the adapter you posted above, and the mini plugs into the Audigy card. Then you plug a TOS cable from the adapter to your receiver.

I wish the Creative tech guy luck who has to decipher what you sent him.

Apparently your the confused one. I have no need for that Y-connector you linked to above, because it would only be stereo. That does nothing for me. My receiver has a Optical (Toslink) In port, and my Audigy 2ZS has the stupid miniplug Digital Out port. I don't need any type of RCA cable.

The instructions that came with my Audigy 2ZS specifically say to use a 4-pole miniplug for 5.1 digital output. So like I said, I need a 4-pole miniplug to either an Optical Toslink or Digital Coaxial connecter cable.

Thanks,
Brandon White
bpw@iastate.edu

 

[Pariah]

No, you don't. You're still not getting it. The 4-pole is ONLY for 6.1 or 7.1 analog out. ANY connection to a receiver from a soundcard is only PCM stereo through digital or multichannel encoded (DD/DTS/AAC) material. Creative's own speakers used to have a proprietary multichannel digital input that allowed higher than 2 channel digital PCM audio to be sent. I don't know if any of those sets are still sold, but I haven't seen any recently, and they didn't use 4-pole cables. You're never going to get it working, because you refuse to listen to people who actually know what they are talking about.

 

[bdub]

So there is no way I can get true 5.1 sound from my Audigy to my receiver? The only way would for 5.1 is to buy one of Creative's speaker sets right?
This is directly from the Creative foldout instruction manual.

Connecting Speakers; For Digital Speakers; For 5.1 digital speakers, use a 4-pole miniplug Digital Cable (available separately).

The funny part is that no such cable exists on Creative's website.

Brandon

 

[Pariah]

If you could read an entire sentence you'd realize what I said was right. From Creative's site:

"The Digital-Out jack on the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1, Sound Blaster Audigy, and Sound Blaster Audigy 2 cards is a 4-pole mini jack that enables the card to deliver multichannel audio via three discrete streams (Front SPDIF, Rear SPDIF, and Center/Subwoofer SPDIF) to compatible speakers such as the Creative Inspire 5700, DTT3500, or MegaWorks 510. "

Note it does not list you receiver as a compatible set of speakers by Creative. No receiver can accept anything but a stereo SPDIF in. There is no way for you to send an unencoded multichannel digital signal from the a Creative card to a receiver. The only way any receiver can input unencoded multichannel streams is either through the new i-link connector, or a manufacturer's proprietary connection, neither of which will be compatible with Creative's method.

 

[zanejohnson]

no lol....listen.... DONT USE THE ANALOG 5.1 OUTPUTS ON YOUR SOUND CARD. USE THE DAMN DIGITAL OUT, the analog 5.1 out is for people who either have a speaker set that only has analog inputs (does no internal mixing) or for people with recievers with the same issue. you apparently have a reciever that has a digital coaxial or optical input, therefore YOU DONT NEED TO USE THE DAMN ANALOG OUTPUTS ON YOUR SOUND CARD, YOU CAN JUST PASS THE DIGITAL SIGNAL ALONG THROUGH A SINGLE CABLE.

 

[Pariah]

zanejohnson, bdub's problem is that he has a no-platinum Audigy card and his receiver only has TOS in, so he needs an adapter to convert the electrical digital out on the Audigy to optical for his receiver. For some reason, he doesn't seem to understand that you can't pass a 5.1 unencoded stream through a SPDIF connection. He's trying to use a method to connect Creative cards to Creative speakers using 3 different digital cables, which isn't a method you can use with any receiver.

 

[bdub]

All I need is a cable/converter to connect my Non-Optical Miniplug Digital Out on my soundcard to my receivers Optical (Toslink) In port...

 

[bdub]

On this page they show a Coaxial-to-miniplug cable. Would it work for my setup? Here's the description they give of it.
http://geraldtomyn.tripod.com/cables.htm#Coaxial-to-miniplug

"This is a digital cable used to send electrical digital information. It has one RCA connector at one end and one 1/8-inch miniplug at the other. It is yet another type of SP/DIF cable. This type of cable can be used with portable digital gear; however to my knowledge there are no minidisc recorders that use this type of cable. It is used by portable DCC and DAT equipment. In the case of recording audio from a computer, the RCA plug is plugged into the digital coaxial "out" jack on the computer, while the 1/8-inch miniplug is plugged into the portable DCC or DAT."

 

[L00PY]

Did you Google? In the cache for the first hit, I found a link to this.

That thread claimed:

All you need is a mono mini plug to RCA plug inline adapter to transport the digital signal thru the 75 ohm coax. I got mine at Radio Shack. You don't need a stereo adapter!

 

[Nebor]

Ok, listen close here.

Your soundcard can ONLY send stereo (2 channel) sound through the digital out to a reciever UNLESS you are playing a game or watching a movie encoded with Dolby Digital or DTS. Other than that, everything else will be 2 channel ONLY.

If you really want full surround sound for everything you'll have to use the analog outs from your sound card to your recievers analog inputs, assuming your reciever has surround analog inputs. This is accomplished with several 2 pole mini-plug that splits into two rca cables.

Listen to Pariah, he knows what he's talking about.

 

[bdub]

So a miniplug to a 2-RCA connecter cable is all I need? Would I plug it into the Digital Out still? This sucks because I already bought 15 foot of optical cable. Oh well.

Thanks for all the help,
Brandon

 

[Cannabis]

If either your motherboard or sound card has spdif header you can buy a bracket that has a digital coax and optical jack built into it ad just use that.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=56-101-901&depa=1
Similar to what I have hooked to my sony 5.1 system and works great.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: bdub
So a miniplug to a 2-RCA connecter cable is all I need? Would I plug it into the Digital Out still? This sucks because I already bought 15 foot of optical cable. Oh well.

Thanks for all the help,
Brandon

No, the miniplug y splitter to RCA is for Analog! You'll need 3 of them, one for left\right, one for rearleft\rearright and one for center\sub. Plug those into the discreet analog inputs on your reciever. By the way, tell us what reciever you have, we can help you better that way.

Well, you actually could use that miniplug y splitter to RCA cable to carry a digital signal. You would just have to figure out which connector (the red or white, left or right) is carrying the signal. So that way you could expirement with digital out while having a sure fire way to connect via Analog.

I'm telling you though, if you play many games, you won't want the digital connection, since it can only carry two channels. (Unless it's a DD or DTS encoded stream) You'll want to get the 3 y splitters and use analog. It's somewhat rare for a reciever to have surround analog inputs though.... So tell us exactly what reciever you have!

 

[L00PY]

Originally posted by: Nebor
No, the miniplug y splitter to RCA is for Analog!

Not true. RCA refers to the connector type, not the cable nor the signal it carries. Digital audio, component analog audio, stereo/surround analog audio, and RF digital audio (on laserdiscs) all use RCA connectors. If I suspect that if you used a mini-plug to 2-RCA connector, one of the the RCA connectors (corresponding to the tip on the plug) would carry the digital signal and the other one could be left hanging.

What I suggested in my first post is essentially the second option for connection to speakers on Creative's support page. Go ahead and buy the 4 buck ratshack adaptor, run coax to your ratshack "coax to optical" box, then from as optical to your receiver.

 

[ragnoroth]

Hi -
I been following this thread nad have a related question.
I would like to hook up the Audigy 2 ZS to my usrround sound receiver. My options are:
- analog (ugh!)
- mini-plug to RCA (what I want)

I tried your approach of using the stereo miniplug to dual-RCA adaptor and find that I can only get the two from speakers to work (if I plug the right RCA jack to my receiver digital input) or just the rear channels (if I plug the left RCA jack to my receiver digital input). Is there anyway to encode all 5 (or 7) channels onto a single RCA-mated cable? My DVD player seems capable of this.

I can find no documentation on this, but I think the 4-pole miniplug is configured such:
pole 1: digital front L and R channel
pole 2: digital rear L and R channels
pole 3: center? Bass?
pole 4: digital speakers 6 and 7? ground?

If only my receiver had a DIN input.

Thanks.

P.S. My receiver also has optical input, but I don't think there are any optimal optical solutions.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: ragnoroth
Hi -
I been following this thread nad have a related question.
I would like to hook up the Audigy 2 ZS to my usrround sound receiver. My options are:
- analog (ugh!)
- mini-plug to RCA (what I want)

I tried your approach of using the stereo miniplug to dual-RCA adaptor and find that I can only get the two from speakers to work (if I plug the right RCA jack to my receiver digital input) or just the rear channels (if I plug the left RCA jack to my receiver digital input). Is there anyway to encode all 5 (or 7) channels onto a single RCA-mated cable? My DVD player seems capable of this.

I can find no documentation on this, but I think the 4-pole miniplug is configured such:
pole 1: digital front L and R channel
pole 2: digital rear L and R channels
pole 3: center? Bass?
pole 4: digital speakers 6 and 7? ground?

If only my receiver had a DIN input.

Thanks.

P.S. My receiver also has optical input, but I don't think there are any optimal optical solutions.

Just realize that if you do connect with digital, you won't get surround\EAX effects in games, it will only be two channel. If I were connected to a reciever, I'd do analog connections, if my reciever supported it.

 

[drag]

I have a audigy.

I have a miniplug to RCA digital SPDIF connection. No optical stuff.

The cheapest way to get it to work you take a generic stereo miniplug-RCA y connector. Plug the white (left) output of the RCA plug into your digital input on your receiver.

That's it. I can get full AC3 passthru and get 5.1 channels on my 5.1 HT receiver. I could get more if I had a 6.1 or 7.1 setup.

The digital signals only need ONE line to go across. All the channels are digitally encoded on that one line and your receiver decodes them into the different analog signals.

If you are going to have a long line from your computer to your reciever then maybe getting a cord specificly for Digital output would be good, but since mine is only a few inches long it's not going to make a difference.

If you only have optical input on your receiver (mine has both) and miniplug output on your soundcard, then your going to have to buy a optical conversion device to change the electrical signals to optical ones.

 

[lazybum131]

In case you still aren't sure what you need for this to work:

Audigy 2 ZS miniplug digital output -> Inline Adapter -> Coaxial Cable -> Coaxial to Optical/Toslink converter -> Optical Cable -> Receiver's optical input.

As everyone has said, you'll only get multichannel sound if you passthrough a Dolby Digital or DTS signal.

 

[ragnoroth]

Thanks to all.

I assume that since my application is surround\EAX , I'm out of luck with the digital appraoch.
Furthermore, my receiver accepts only two-channel analog inputs. So I'm stuck. May as well use headphones, then...

Anyone know of a good SPDIF/IEC958 / digital optical FAQ?

Cheers!

 

[CrackheadDan]

Alright, i was searching the net and i came across this thread, i have a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS and Logitech 5.1 Z-680 speakers. The speakers have Analog inputs, along with digital coaxial and digital optical. I bought a Stereo Mini to RCA Y cable, which is one mini jack to 2 rca cables, i plugged the mini into the digital out of the soundblaster and one of the RCA plugs into the digital coaxial. problem is, it seems the signal is split between the 2 RCA plugs. one does the front 2 speakers, the other does the 2 rear speakers. now im just lost, is there a plug to make the 2 RCAs into one RCA? is that a Coaxial to Mini adapter?

 

[ponyo]

Originally posted by: CrackheadDan
Alright, i was searching the net and i came across this thread, i have a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS and Logitech 5.1 Z-680 speakers. The speakers have Analog inputs, along with digital coaxial and digital optical. I bought a Stereo Mini to RCA Y cable, which is one mini jack to 2 rca cables, i plugged the mini into the digital out of the soundblaster and one of the RCA plugs into the digital coaxial. problem is, it seems the signal is split between the 2 RCA plugs. one does the front 2 speakers, the other does the 2 rear speakers. now im just lost, is there a plug to make the 2 RCAs into one RCA? is that a Coaxial to Mini adapter?

If you have Audigy 2 ZS and Z-680 speakers, connect it using analog. You'll get better sound. DAC in the Audigy 2 ZS is better. You'll get inferior sound using optical in your case and you'll only get sound in 2 speakers except for movies.

 

[MDE]

Assuming you're running an Athlon XP, an easy way to circumvent this conversion nonsense is to get an Nvidia nForce2 board with SoundStorm (and the appropriate outputs) and hook it up to your reciever via a digital connection. SoundStorm is the only way to get realtime 5.1 digital output on a PC that I know of.

 

[cheburashka]

I am in the same boat.... who has a six channel analog-in receiver? (I think ONKYO supports it...)

I am wondering if this product might work. I see similar headers on the ZS, although this model is not in the supported list, but it kind of looks like all that is needed is the Dig I/O module which plugs into the Dig out (which the older cards did not supply and why this product was made)

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=16&product=30&nav=technicalSpecifications