PC connection help please!

[Zoidburg]

Hey fellas, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on this for me please.

I have a mesh desktop pc running vista which is about 18 months old. At the moment its connected to my amp via a CA dacgamic via usb. So far so good, pretty happy with it for convienience factor etc and it dont sound toooo bad usually.

Out of curiousity id like to connect it via optical for a change. I think this should be possible as i have a high def sound card inplace which should give audio via the optical feed on the pack panel.

If i go to the control panel and select "manage audio devices" I can see that i have enabled the "spdif interface - via high def audio" setting and yet I still get no sound.

Am I missing something? Should I be enabling / disabling anything else to get this working?

Anyone offer any help please??:scratch::scratch::scratch:

cheers

Ben

[WAD62]

Hey fellas, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on this for me please.

I have a mesh desktop pc running vista which is about 18 months old. At the moment its connected to my amp via a CA dacgamic via usb. So far so good, pretty happy with it for convienience factor etc and it dont sound toooo bad usually.

Out of curiousity id like to connect it via optical for a change. I think this should be possible as i have a high def sound card inplace which should give audio via the optical feed on the pack panel.

If i go to the control panel and select "manage audio devices" I can see that i have enabled the "spdif interface - via high def audio" setting and yet I still get no sound.

Am I missing something? Should I be enabling / disabling anything else to get this working?

Anyone offer any help please??:scratch::scratch::scratch:

cheers

Ben

Hi Ben,

Sounds like your setup is quite similar to my study setup...I use the SPDIF out of my M-Audio 2496 (soon to be 192), to feed my Beresford DAC, on an XP SP3 machine.

The one additional thing you need to do is configure your music player (I use winamp) to write to your soundcard's SPDIF out directly.

What player are you using?

P.S. You'll get a big improvement in quality via the SPDIF over the USB particularly on the DACMAGIC...

[Zoidburg]

Cheers Will thats very helpfull.

Im not really up to speed on music players and tend to play everything using VLC media player. I will check its set up menus and see whats I need to change.

If I move over to winamp can you give me a brief low down on configuring it by any chance?

cheers

[WAD62]

Cheers Will thats very helpfull.

Im not really up to speed on music players and tend to play everything using VLC media player. I will check its set up menus and see whats I need to change.

If I move over to winamp can you give me a brief low down on configuring it by any chance?

cheers

Yes no problem...Another windows option other people use is Foobar, it's out of the box settings are a bit better than Winamp, but once you get used to the configuration settings in winamp it's a nicer interface IMHO. Both will give you the same sound quality when configured properly...

I've no experience with the VLC player, but there must be a configuration option somewhere for you to select the desired output path.

With winamp for example, I use the 'DirectSound' out plugin, and within that I can select from one of several output options for my soundcard, Multimedia, Stereo, ASIO, or SPDIF...it's only when I use the SPDIF option that gives me a digital out from my soundcard :)

[Zoidburg]

Yes no problem...Another windows option other people use is Foobar, it's out of the box settings are a bit better than Winamp, but once you get used to the configuration settings in winamp it's a nicer interface IMHO. Both will give you the same sound quality when configured properly...

I've no experience with the VLC player, but there must be a configuration option somewhere for you to select the desired output path.

With winamp for example, I use the 'DirectSound' out plugin, and within that I can select from one of several output options for my soundcard, Multimedia, Stereo, ASIO, or SPDIF...it's only when I use the SPDIF option that gives me a digital out from my soundcard :)

Brilliant thanks Will, I will give that a try over the weekend. and post back my thoughts, espeicially given your comments on improved sound.

Thanks again!

[WAD62]

Brilliant thanks Will, I will give that a try over the weekend. and post back my thoughts, espeicially given your comments on improved sound.

Thanks again!

What PCI soundcard do you have by the way?

P.S. Use the modern winamp 'skin', as the menu's are in different places depending on the selected 'skin'. Everything you need will be in options/preferences menu, and there are a lot of options ;)

[Zoidburg]

What PCI soundcard do you have by the way?

P.S. Use the modern winamp 'skin', as the menu's are in different places depending on the selected 'skin'. Everything you need will be in options/preferences menu, and there are a lot of options ;)

Im not sure but I will report back later with details of the soundcard, i remember when i specced it i specifically checked the "upgraded hidef audio soundcard" box cos it said it had digital out.

[Zoidburg]

UPDATE time, just not a very good update :(

Still no luck getting any sound from the PC via toslink :scratch:

I downloaded foobar and set that to the correct output. I set my soundcard to spdiff output and the sound card seems to be working fine. I just get nothing out of the dac. Does anyone known if the Dacmagic has a particular imput for spdiff?

[WAD62]

UPDATE time, just not a very good update :(

Still no luck getting any sound from the PC via toslink :scratch:

I downloaded foobar and set that to the correct output. I set my soundcard to spdiff output and the sound card seems to be working fine. I just get nothing out of the dac. Does anyone known if the Dacmagic has a particular imput for spdiff?

Toslink = Optical, SPDIF = Coax

There are 2 input channels, and you can use either connection type, obviously you need to select 1 or 2 from the front panel for the relevant channel.

Does the sample rate light up when you play, if so your problem is elsewhere...

[Stratmangler]

Toslink = Optical, SPDIF = Coax

There are 2 input channels, and you can use either connection type, obviously you need to select 1 or 2 from the front panel for the relevant channel.

Does the sample rate light up when you play, if so your problem is elsewhere...

T'aint what Wiki says about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/PDIF

[WAD62]

T'aint what Wiki says about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/PDIF

...agreed Chris, but it is how the Dacmagic manual refers to it

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets/documents/AP239051DacMagicUserManual01English.pdf

[Stratmangler]

I know, but surely when the manual states
Connect your digital source to Digital Input 1. Either S/P DIF co-axial or TOSLINK optical types can be
used, each being of equal quality. it's a pretty comprehensive statement, and difficult to misinterpret too.

[Zoidburg]

iv still not mastered it and it's gonna be next weekend before I get the chance to try again now. I will update again though soon cheers folks