[Snuffy]

I have the SB Audigy 1 with the front panel

I have recently purchased a AVR-3015 Wintal 7.1ch 130W AV Receiver
http://wintal.com.au/surround_systems/01618789.html

and have a 5.1 speaker system plugged into it
now from the audigy to the Receiver i have used

Optical Spdif
Coax Spdif
And the output thats on the actual card at the back of the pc which is also Spdif

I have tried all different modes on the pc and on my Receiver and i can ONLY get stereo out from the audigy

i have tried the Standard Audigy drivers, then updated them

then tried the Audigy 4 drivers which have been hack to allow all other Audigy Cards to use them, they worked fine but still only Stereo Output

also tried the Audigy 4 beta drivers (hacked), once again, only stereo

also tried the kX Customer 3rd party drivers (kxproject.lugosoft.com) that where made for the audigy series, they also worked fine but again only stereo out

does anyone have any ideas??
i use a Asus A7N8X-E Motherboard

maybe the problem is with my audigy? or even the motherboard maybe??

any thoughts/help would be greatly appreciated

 

[jimscreechy]

This is a long long standing problem with nearly every audio card I have encountered. The basic answer is you will only get stereo outputs with this setup. God knows why this is the case but it just is. If you ask me it is a massive oversight on the part of the designers of these cards.

Essentialy it is how the practice of encoding and decoding the signal is handled by the card and the software. An encoded digital signal from a source such as a game is decoded sent to the audio ouputs as seperate channes... but not the digital you say? Correct. Well only as a stereo signal which is particularly pointless. I won't go into detals on codecs this information is readily available, but most cards including this one have the ability to disable the decoder so that the signal is supposedly sent to the digital ouput encoded in 5.1/7.1 format to be decoded by say a reciever. I have NEVER managed to get this to work, and trust me I have tried a few cards including the SB Audigy 2ZS.


However, you will get the proper 5.1 and 7.1 digital signal from the digital ouputs if you show a film which is encoded with the appropriate standard. Why this seems to work is beyond me.
You will only get the 5.1 and 7.1 signals (and there is a system that provides the 5.1 and 7.1 from a stereo signal, but I forget what its called) from standard sources or games if you use the non digital ouputs. ie the common RCA plugs. If you go this way with 7.1 you are obviously going to have a pylon of cables running from your pc (wasn't the whole point of digital output to remove this problem)

You are indeed fortunate though for all is not lost. The motherboard you have A7N8X is so far the only mortherboard i have encountered that provides the facilities you want from an soundcard... and an onboard soundcard at that. I cannot say enough about how good this motherboard is, and the N-force sound chipset used is of the quality that I believe is certainly comparable to the SB, though I believe it is only 5.1 and not 7.1, still.

At any rate if you want full 5.1 digital signal from the digital output, use the onboard soundcard.

There are numerous articles about this problem, so you can take solace in the fact that you are one in a long list of people who have found this shortcoming somewhat annoying.