gigabyte mother board optical out

[dead_phoenix]

Hey all. Im currently using a GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 13366 Intel X58 motherboard with a creative sound blaster X-fi Xtremegamer sound card. I recently bought a nice headest for online gaming that accepts audio one of two ways. Through an optical toslink port and through the 3.5 mm jacks like those on the sound card. I would like to route sound through the optical out port on my motherboard but am having some trouble making that work. From what I can tell there is no signal running to the optical out port (there is no red light on in the port).

So I am wondering two things. One, is there some BIOS setting that I have to turn the port on? If so, where in the BIOS menu is it. And two, is it possible to easily route sound to this port even with the sound card in and working. I am running windows 7 x64 if you need that info. Also, im at work right now so I may not be able to answer some questions right away.

Thanks for the help in advance

[wazza300]

Re: gigabyte mother board optical out

have you enabled (optical out)in your soundcard software??

[Psycho101]

Re: gigabyte mother board optical out

The optical out is for the onboard Realtek audio. It's (as far as I know) impossible to route sound from your X-Fi to this port.

Optical out needs dedicated hardware on the device producing the sound.

[wazza300]

Re: gigabyte mother board optical out

isnt there an option to allow devices to take exclusive control? of the realtek sound?

[Psycho101]

Re: gigabyte mother board optical out

If there is another sound card on board, usually Azalia codec is disabled. Having it enabled can lead to all sorts of problems.

If there was some kind of interface to allow an external card to be connected to the optical out and the correct optical processing hardware and a corresponding output on the soundcard, then it would be possible. However I don't think that the X-Fi is able to take over the optical out via sending info down the PCIe bus it's plugged into.

I'm 99% certain of this, but I will have a look around and see what I can turn up.

My uncle does Home Theatre installs and I know he's used a lot of Gigabyte boards including the UD5, so maybe he knows. Not many HT enthusiasts use X-Fi though apparently. Asus Xonar is common for those on a budget (the lower models) and something like the Auzentech Prelude 7.1 for a more high end solution. He also adds extra shielding to the cards if asked (don't ask me how). He may know something.

[Psycho101]

Re: gigabyte mother board optical out

Found it. There is ofc an SPDIF socket on the board. If it is connected correctly to the X-Fi then then could it be possible that it's not enabled as an output in the X-Fi options tab labelled SPDIF I/O.

Also there is an SPDIF in and an SPDIF out header. Not sure if one can be confused for the other, or if they are keyed so thatit's impossible to do so. Worth a check.