Hello, could you advice me please, on how to passthrough music from PC in flac format into AVreceiver using toslink (optical cabel)? In other words: how to eliminate any impact of my cheap gaming soundcard (Creative X-FI) on final sound quality of my setup (PC-optical cabel-AVreceiver-speakers).
 
When playing DTS or Dolby Digital format, all the magic is done by AVreceiver (can tell by simple fact, that changing volume on PC has no effect) and it sounds great.
When playing any other format (Wav, flac, mp3), it uses PCM format. Which (if i understand it correctly) means, that all the processing is done by sound card. What i need, is to send untouched signal straight to my AVreceiver and let HIM to do the magic.

vincik said:

  Hello, could you advice me please, on how to pass through music from PC in flac format into AVreceiver using toslink (optical cabel)? In other words: how to eliminate any impact of my cheap gaming sound card (Creative X-FI) on final sound quality of my setup (PC-optical cabel-AVreceiver-speakers).
 
When playing DTS or Dolby Digital format, all the magic is done by AVreceiver (can tell by simple fact, that changing volume on PC has no effect) and it sounds great.
When playing any other format (Wav, flac, mp3), it uses PCM format. Which (if i understand it correctly) means, that all the processing is done by sound card. What i need, is to send untouched signal straight to my AVreceiver and let HIM to do the magic.

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The default for S/PDIF (optical or coaxial) is 2-channel PCM (uncompressed) digital audio.
DTS-Connect or DDL (Dobly Digital live) is need to compress up to 6-channel of digital audio, before the signal is sent thru S/PDIF.
The compressed audio is limited to 24-bit/48K, which still good enough for gaming, DVD and still fairly good for Blu-ray movies.
 
To bypass the sound card's audio process, go into Windows > Control Panel> Sound> Playback tab
One of the options in the Playback there should allow the PCM digital audio to go straight thru the sound card, bypassing the sound card's audio processor.
 
Have you tried running HDMI from your graphics card to the A/V receiver (remove the X-Fi sound card).
HDMI can pass up to 8-channel (7.1) of PCM (uncompressed) 24-bit/192K digital audio.