How to run two soundcards??

[Gabe Logan]

I think we are talking about different things here.I was refering to the 3 prong connection that is in the back of a cd drive and soundcards.

[Samgotit]

Originally Posted by skyline889

My soundcard only has an Toslink potical cable running from the digital out on the Sony DVD burner to the sound card. Are the Emu/Creatives wired different from the AV-710s?

BTW thanks to both of you for the help.

My fault Syline889, I'm giving info based on internal sound cards and components. I don't have much experience with external stuff except a M-Audio Firewire (which I use for audio only).

Is your burner external? This part is confusing me.
Can you confirm you have an optical out on the burner.

[skyline889]

It's an internal but there's a digital out on the back of the burner. Here's a pic, I think that's a Toslink cable right? It's the grey and black one.

[DanT]

You don't need that cable I never used it the DVD drive can pass the data through the IDE cable so just get rid of the cable and problem solve.

You may have to enable digital CD audio from your Device manager dvd properties if it's not already done. It might be enable by default it's been so long I haven't used that cable that I don't remember.

[Control panel ->system -> hardware -> device manager -> DVD/CD drive ->properties ->Properties]

[skyline889]

That's how the sound is getting to my card. The IDE is running thorugh the mobos onboard audio, the optical through the soundcard. The card doesn't work if I take out that cable.

[Samgotit]

OK, that’s a CD audio cable not a toslink. All that cable does is carry audio if you use the CD/DVD ROM directly.
EDIT: as stated above you can go digital here, it's probably not enabled if you hear nothing w/o the cable.

I wouldn't trouble myself with hooking it up to the new card, unless someone with an EMU recommends it over your Platinum Pro for DVD audio.

For "regular" audio (mp3, FLAC, etc.) your new sound card will take care of the decoding and getting the signal out. That CD audio cable is not necessary for this.

[DanT]

I haven't used that cable for years and I can play my CD fine. Never had any problem of sound. What doesn't work if you take the cable out? Did you check if the Digital CD is enable? What do you used to play music from CD. It should work fine without the cable.

I dont' know about DVD-audio since I don't have any.

[milhouse6]

Keep in mind you can configure many programs to output to a particular sound device, i.e. you can force winamp (and most similar except WMP) to play audio through your PP while leaving the E-mu as the system default. (or vice versa, if your DVD software allows you to choose the audio device it uses)

[lini]

skyline889: What you've depicted there, is the two-pin electrical S/P-DIF variant with TTL-levels (= different signal levels than consumer electrical/coaxial S/P-DIF!). Some soundcards will need that connected for passing on the data of DTS cds to an external DTS decoder, otherwise it's pretty much useless for any modern operating system that supports digital audio extraction over the data bus ((E)IDE/SATA...). DanT has already mentioned where to check that in WinXP.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

[Samgotit]

Originally Posted by lini

skyline889: What you've depicted there, is the two-pin electrical S/P-DIF variant with TTL-levels (= different signal levels than consumer electrical/coaxial S/P-DIF!). Some soundcards will need that connected for passing on the data of DTS cds to an external DTS decoder, otherwise it's pretty much useless for any modern operating system that supports digital audio extraction over the data bus ((E)IDE/SATA...). DanT has already mentioned where to check that in WinXP.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

Thanks for clearing that up. I kept seeing that as cd audio with a hidden wire.