Surround sound setup

Hi,
50' cable length is longer than I thought possible with SPDIF! However, with DDL or DTS, excessive cable length would not cause distortion- it would cause the signal to drop altogether. Since that's not happening, I don't think that your cable length is the problem.

First off, try an older version of the driver (like the one on the CD), and see if that fixes it. Try backing off on the volume on your receiver and see if that changes the amount of distortion present, as well.

Aaron, thanks for replying. I'll try these suggestions. Before I do, please take a look at the exact optical I am using to let me know if it's ok to use.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10229&cs_id...

That cable is 8.0mm, however I think I'm going to use 5.0mm instead.

Yes, I think that optical cable should be fine. I'm not aware of any problems that have resulted from cable use, so any optical cable should do.

Aaron, as you suggested I re-installed the software included with the soundcard. The problem is now fixed but I don't think it was due to the re-installation, even though there is a difference with the drivers - as you can clearly see the desktop icon changes between the drivers.

I figured out that when the window for the soundcard is open on the screen (like when adjusting the eq or changing output modes), the distortion in my surround sound begins - it sounds really bad actually. It's not until I click 'ok' and the screen minimizes that the sound returns to normal, for both DTS & DDL.

Thanks for your help Aaoron.
Matt

Hi Matt,
That's very strange. It sounds like something is conflicting with the control panel application. If you want to try and fix it, try uninstalling the driver, using some PC/registry cleaning software, and re-installing it. Not sure if that will help, but it might be worth a shot.

Aaron:

On a previous post I mentioned I'm experiencing distortion when I have the 3D application open on my desktop while music is playing. I was incorrect and the application was not causing the distortion. The distortion is coming from various mp3's on my pc.

Again, I primarily purchased the inferno sound card b/c of the optical output feature, so I could run optical cable from my pc to my home stereo, to be able to listen to my mp3's and streaming music over websites on my surround system in another room of the house. My 2-channel pc speaker setup doesn't have any distortion issues (then again, it's not playing in DTS or DDL either).

Can you please clarify, is this soundcard designed more specifically to play dvds on your pc that are encoded with DTS or DDL already, or is the inferno actually capable of outputting mp3's into DTS or DDL? I'm thinking now what I'm trying to use the soundcard for isn't what it was designed to do..

I'm wondering if the slightest poor quality mp3's are being distorted when the inferno is trying to decode them from 2 channel to 5.1 surround sound, you know what I'm saying?

Is there a way to utilize the optical cable and play mp3's not in the DTS or DDL format? (maybe this would do away with the distortion). When I try to choose another option besides the DTS or DDL, my receiver doesn't recognize any of the other available formats and no sound comes out of my speakers (not the pc speakers, but the setup in the other part of my house).

Do you have any suggestions for settings I should try or a way to avoid this distortion? I'm using winamp as my media player, and I've gone through all the settings on my yamaha receiver trying to resolve this issue. I can say that when listening to some various streaming music through websites, distortion isn't an issue, so far.. , but I guess that depends on the quality of the signal/broadcast that site is sending - some better than others.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Matt

Hi Matt,
First of all, the Inferno is definitely capable of playing back your mp3s in encoded DDL and DTS formats. You should be able to play back the mp3s to the receiver in PCM (Digital Audio 48k, for example), but perhaps the long cable is causing a problem in this case.

I would recommend trying a different audio application as well, to see if that is contributing to the problem. Winamp is a pretty "tweak-friendly" player, and sometimes that flexibility can cause problems.

Aaron I figured out how to get my surround sound to work with another output format (i.e. the 48k). I have to unplug my pc speakers from the soundcard. When the minijack is unplugged (my pc setup is just two speakers, and one sub - connected with one mini jack input into the sound card), I can select other formats aside from the DTS & DDL. The 48k played fine, in PCM (as you mentioned) without distortion.

Is there any way to keep my pc speakers plugged so that I don't have unplug them each time I want to listen to my receiver set up in the other room? And if so, is there a way to listen to both the pc speakers and speakers in the other room at the same time?

So far I've only been able to listen to one or the other..

Thanks.
Matt

Hi Matt,
I'm not sure I understand- the Inferno should be able to output all possible formats, regardless of which jacks are being used. Also, you should be able to use the analog and digital outputs together as long as the Digital output format is not DDL/DTS.

Can you double check?