PCI Soundcard Recommendations

[albal]

Hi,

I need a PCI soundcard that is supported in LinuxMCE that has SPDIF output at TTL Level suitable for connection to a Nvidia 8600GT.  Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Al

[pigdog]

Hi.

Just curious, but does your motherboard have SPDIF out?  You could then connect the mobo SPDIF output, with a compatible cable, to your GF8600GS video card input and then output sound via your DVI/HDMI connector to your T.V. or A/V equipment.    No sound card needed.  Or, am I missing something?

Thanks.

[albal]

No My motherboard doesn't have SPDIF out.  It's the ASRock939-Dual-SATA2.  I was hoping perhaps there is the output on the chip but I've not found it.  From my reading about this though I've heard that the Nvidia chips will take either a TTL or Coax Level input on SPDIF in.  Though I can't find anything formally that verifies this. 

I've got another post in the forum about getting SPDIF output working on the SB Live (CT4670?) but without success so far.

Cheers,
Al

[albal]

Hi,

I got SPDIF working on my SBLive.  By connecting the coax connection to my Amp I could verify that AC3 and DTS Passthrough was working.  I modified asound.conf to give the pcm.!default to the HW Plug of the IEC958.  Using mplayer I could play out AC3/DTS WAV Files.

I then checked with a DVM the connections around the ports and found the pins needed on the board.

Looking at the board with the pins backplane to the left and the chips facing you there is a 4 pin header at the top left of the board near the coax 3.5mm output.  You need to connect to the top two pins.  The pin on the left is ground the pin on the right is SPDIF.  I measured it at just over 1.8v on DC (bear in mind it's clocked signal).

G S
N N

G - Ground
S - SPDIF
N - Not used
N - Not used

Cheers,
Al