Outputting 24/96 from Windows 7

[Reid Malenfant]

Ah, something I'm definately not familiar with

Sorry Bernie, I had an idea but seeing that brought it to a dead stop

[Canetoad]

No worries mate. I'll sort it out. If worse comes to worse I can get a 3.5mm to SPDIF RCA adaptor cable and use the soundcard output on the back of the PC. I was told it would be better to bypass the soundcard if possible.

[bobbasrah]

No worries mate. I'll sort it out. If worse comes to worse I can get a 3.5mm to SPDIF RCA adaptor cable and use the soundcard output on the back of the PC. I was told it would be better to bypass the soundcard if possible.

Digital to analogue to digital to feed a DAC? Why on earth would you want to do that ?
Other than some very expensive devices, soundcards are pretty poor digital audio converters, and are not in an ideal environment with regards to noise. However, most of those I have seen do have a digital audio out, usually optical.
You should have a digital audio signal on that motherboard, because that is what feeds the soundcard, the only question remaining is WHERE IS IT?????.
It SHOULD be on the SPDIF connection.

[Canetoad]

I would have thought a digital output on a sound card would bypass the DAC.

[bobbasrah]

Correct, but you were considering taking the 3.5mm output which I believe is analogue.

What I'm getting at is that the digital signal is alive and available otherwise it could not fire up the soundcard...
You should be able to pick up the signal without the card direct from the board, and you have found the spdif output terminal. The fact that the digital signal is going to your PCI (guessing for a P4) socket should be common to the spdif output, unless something has physically prevented it, which seems impossible unless it is running through some sort of switch.
Could you please take a peek and note the motherboard make model and Rev., and I will go dig around...

[Canetoad]

The Soundblaster card has 5.1 output as analogue, mic input and it also has a dedicated 3.5mm socket for digital output. It's not analogue. It also has an output socket (2-pin) on the board I can feed off. I will only use this if I can't get the feed from the motherboard sorted.

I'll let you know what I find once I've dragged the PC out of the corner and disconnected everything again.

[bobbasrah]

Fair enough Bernie, my mistake. I never came acroos a Creative card with a 3.5mm digital output. I only came across optical digital outs before, so excuse my higgorance.
Hopefully, we are gettung near the end of this......