K8N neo2 Plat Digital Audio

[PowerLlama]

How the hell do I enable it? I've tried plugging my Z-680's into both optical and coax, and neither seem to send a signal. The speakers just sit there saying "Detecting..." Analog signal works fine though.

Help please!

First post btw.. hehe

 

[PowerLlama]

anyone?

 

[Slaimus]

The digital output will only do stereo for regular audio. The only way to get a AC3 surround signal is by using AC3 passthrough.

 

[mdahc]

I had the Z680's and now I have the Z-5500's, and I also have the K8N Neo2. Both optical and coaxial output worked for me just fine on both sets of speakers. One way of telling for sure with the optical output is if there is a red light emitting from the end of the optical cable (the end not plugged into the motherboard). With coaxial, you just have to plug in and play something. BTW, if you're connected via S/PDIF, then the speakers' control center will show no input (or no signal detected or some message like that on the blue display) if nothing's playing. Once you have audio output, then you'll seen the control center's message change as it decodes.

 

[PowerLlama]

Originally posted by: Slaimus
The digital output will only do stereo for regular audio. The only way to get a AC3 surround signal is by using AC3 passthrough.

What's this mean? I'm an audio noob...


And there's a red light coming through my optical cable. I'll go home and try playing different stuff while trying the different inputs.

 

[mdahc]

He means that your motherboard's sound controller (Realtek ALC-850) passes the Dolby Digital surround sound information from a DVD, for example, to your Dolby Digital decoder in your Z-680 control box. Again, if you're just playing back CD red book audio or an MP3, you don't get any surround sound information, only stereo (left and right). The Z680 control box has different effects that can be applied (like Dolby Music, etc.) to butter up regular 2 channel (left and right) audio, but I didn't find them so appealing.

Also, IIRC, I think there's an option in the regular Windows Sound control panel to enable S/PDIF, so make sure that's been checked.

Lastly, I forgot to mention that when I used S/PDIF for regular 2 channel audio, I noticed quite a bit of latency (noticeable pause from when you hit play to when you actually start hearing sound coming from the speakers), so you might just want to use the analog outputs for non-surround sound applications.

 

[PowerLlama]

If there's an option, I honestly can't find it. Damnit, I wanted to use digital audio instead of analog for this too.

 

[mdahc]

Sorry, I'm not at home so I can't check at the moment. I think its under the options menu then under the Advanced Options or something like that. Also, are you using the latest Realtek drivers or the nVIDIA nForce drivers?

 

[PowerLlama]

My advanced options is greyed out for some reason.... and I'm using the nforce ones cause I heard that they were newer

 

[PowerLlama]

hmm when I turn on the volume bar for SPDIF it's greyed out too.... damnit

 

[mdahc]

Use the Realtek drivers from MSI's Web site.

 

[PowerLlama]

Still have nothing... god damnit this sucks.

 

[PowerLlama]

Woot, I finally got it working. I went to the MSI website and found out they had forums too! I d/led the latest nForce Audio drivers and uninstalled the realteks and it works perfect.

Thanks for the help though!