I'm not sure if this is the correct forum, but I'm going to try here anyways. If you know anything, please help me out
I just recently bought the Logitech Z5500 5.1 Surround Sound speakers and wish to use them with my Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS. On the back panel (The card) I only have 1/8 inputs and one labeled "Digital Out." On the front panel I have a ton of stuff inclduing S/PDIF i/o and Optical i/o. The pod for the Z5500 speakers only has analog in and then S/PDIF Coax and Optical in.
I tried plugging an S/PDIF cable into the S/PDIF out on the front panel, but the Pod still says it's not recieving a digital signal. I look in my volume controls and I have the S/PDIF in listen, but not the out. How do I enable the S/PDIF out to be the output for all audio?
Let me preface this by saying that the following will explain the different ways I assume your going to be using the card.
You have two ways to watch DTS DVDs. The first is to get the Audigy 2 ZS to do the decoding (by setting your DVD player to SPDIF output mode and enabling the Audigy's software decoder). In this configuration you'll have to use the analogue connections.
The second method is to use the digital output on the Audigy to connect via a mono 3.5 mm cable (you can just use one of the plugs in a RCAx2 to phono cable) to the Z-5500, which will do the decoding. In this case also you set the DVD Player software to SPDIF output mode but disable the Audigy's internal decoders, causing the DD(AC-3)/DTS streams to be sent out through the output.
However, the digital connection has a few drawbacks:
1) You won't get 5.1 channel sound from games as the Audigy uses a proprietary SPDIFx3 connector (four-pole, 3 mono connectors on the digital out) to send out three uncompressed stereo PCM streams. It will work for DVDs as they use a single mono channel (standard S/PDIF ) with a compressed ( Dolby Digital/DTS ) stream to carry 5.1 channels of audio. However games in surround are a no go; giving you only the front two channels via digital. The only way to get 5.1 channel audio through the digital out is to use a Creative speaker system with the corresponding four-pole digital input, certain models of Denon AV Receivers which support this four pole connector OR use a Dolby Digital Live soundcard (such as the old nForce 2 mobos ) (or the newer C-Media cards, which are supposed to be a bit flaky) which will on the fly generate a Dolby Digital bit stream.
2) You may have issues playing DTS CDs via SPDIF with anything other than Media Source as the Audigy may resample the stream to 48 kHz (DTS CD streams are 44.1 kHz and this destroys the bit stream).
The ideal way to connect it is to use the analogue connections and switch to digital for DVDs or simply use analogue and the soundcard's internal decoders, and just use the Z-5500 for Pro Logic II processing.
