Will this work: X-Fi S/PDIF --> FiiO E17 + E9 give me CMSS & EAX with E17 DAC & E9 amp?

I'm trying to get the best of both worlds on my gaming desktop - high quality sound combined with immersive headphone positional audio effects for games.

Right now I have an E7 + E9 setup for listening to music (via USB), and the X-Fi PCI-Express for gaming.  Problem is, I like the sound output much better with the E7+E9 setup, but I don't get the CMSS positional sound for gaming, so I keep switching back & forth.

With the new E17 coming out with S/PDIF input, my plan is to configure the X-Fi to send 2 channel audio over S/PDIF, do the CMSS processing, and let the DAC in the E17 give me the clearer sound that I like from the USB input.

Alternatively, is there a way to configure my system to have the X-Fi do the CMSS & EAX processing then divert that audio stream through the existing USB audio device? 

Thanks in advance!

Excellent, thank you!  Looks like there will be a new item on my CC statement for my wife to question me over 

I used to think it did too, but then I tinkered with the settings and found that setting speaker configuration in the windows playback devices control panel to 5.1 Surround and checking Full Range speakers fixed that.

Before doing this the 3d effect in games was mediocre at best, even though the positional test in the Creative control panel worked properly in headphone mode, and it made most things sound "funny" and hollow.

But after making the change in the windows panel it made everything come alive.  I think it's now sounding exactly as it was intended to sound.  I really wish creative gave better documentation on how you should use these features, but they don't.

Here's how I configured mine

Creative control panel:

CMSS-3D: on

speaker configuration: Headphones

Bass Boost: On, +2db, cuttoff set to 20hz

Crystalizer - off

Windows Playback Devices (with the X-Fi speaker out selected, click the configure button)

Speakers:  5.1

Full-range speakers:  check front left and right, and surround speakers.

Doing this last one drastically changed what the CMSS-3D effect sounded like.    

CMSS-3D seems to do two things, depending on the type of source audio it is processing:  

If it is processing surround sound, it creates the virtualized surround over headphones.    This is exactly what I want it to do, give me virtual positional audio in my M50's.   

If it dealing with stereo sound, it expands it to create a virtualized surround sound over headphones.  This I don't like, and this is where you end up with butchered sounding audio.  

I think if you have your speakers set to just stereo in the windows control panel, then windows reports to programs & games that you only have 2 speakers, and so the games will only give you a 2 channel sound for the X-Fi to process, so everything gets the 2 channel expanded sound treatment, and you end up with garbage.    Setting speaker configuration to 5.1 fixed that for me.

Oh and Skyrim works great with CMSS-3D, configured just like I have it.  I get full positional audio over my headphones.   WoW also works great this way.

Part of the problem is the the fact that the article you linked is filed under "Creative Headsets", aka their USB headphones.   You can't find that article if you look under the Knowledge Base articles for any of the X-Fi sound cards.

Creative's support is just awful.  for me at least, the 3d positional headphone feature is the sole reason I bought this card, otherwise I'd have just stuck with my E7+E9 combo. 

I think a lot of their "documentation" is actually written by people in the marketing department that really don't understand how this stuff actually works and is used.  For example, their video on CMSS-3D and EAX features spent a lot of time on enabling the EAX effects on your mic, so you can "sound like you're in the environment that you're in game"......I can't think of any case in which I would want that.