Fresh install, SPDIF died

[Speedo]

Upgraded bios and reinstalled my friends A8N-SLI system. Everything seemed to work very well, until he got home and tried to connect the spdif to his reciever. He called me back and said that he didn't get any signal from the SPDIF. Latest chipset drivers (6.66) is installed. Earlier (when it worked) he had some old ones, because he said the mixer looked different. Is there any special setting to make since nVidia took over the audio drivers?

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

 

[Speedo]

Anyone?? Are there any known problems with the digital out with the latest chipset drivers? Or is there something special you have to do to activate it?

 

[Zap]

He most likely has to enable the SPDIF output in either the drivers or the audio control panel. I'm not using onboard right now, but in my VIA Vinyl Audio Control Panel (for my Envy card) there's an option to enable the optical output, which has to be checkmarked for it to work. Some sound cards disable analog sound if the digital sound is enabled so often drivers have the digital output disabled when first installed.

 

[Speedo]

I have almost the same system here, and even though I don't use the spdif output, I have looked thru the nVidia Mixer and didn't find any on/off switch for the spdif output.

Now my friend called me up and told me he installed the Realtec 850 drivers, and it started working. But then he got other problems instead. TV-out stopped working?

Has anyone got the spdif-out work with the latest nvidia chipset drivers?

 

[Speedo]

I have done a lot of google searches, and the most interesting I found in one forum was this:

"The SPDIF on the realtek ALC850 chips don't support Nvidia Drivers like the older Nforce 2 chipsets with Soundstorm which i gather is what you previously had on your A7n8x.

To use the SPDIF u need the realtek drivers installed otherwise it doesn't detect the SPDIF outputs as being there... "

Can anyone here confirm this?

 

[Peter]

With chipset-embedded audio, there's often two driver options - the one from the makers of the chipset (where the audio engine is), or the one from the D/A codec makers. With simple audio engines like the one in the NF4, the codec maker's might very well be the better choice.