Hey all,

i recently bought myself a Cambridge Soundwords Desktop Theater 5.1 DTT3500 Digital. Sweet, but discovered my soundcard couldn't handle it: it was a SB Live! Value, which can handle up to 4.1 max.

So i checked the swedish ebay (tradera) and got myself a SB Live! Player 5.1 instead. It came in today, so I eagerly plugged it in and connected the cables as I believe they should be connected.

Well now here's the thing:
running 'Test' on the speakersystem itself generates a test tone from all 5 speakers and the sub, np.
when in AudioHQ with a 5.1 speaker setup, running test only gives me sound from the two front speakers. The DTT3500 has a small LED at the bottom which is supposed to light up whenever it's receiving a digital signal.. it doesn't.

I've connected the soundblaster using a minijack to DIN cable, then a DIN-DIN connecting it to the Processor unit of the DTT3500. Obviously I connected the minijack to the soundblaster Digital out.

So i've tried installing latest ac3 codec.. i've tried some updates of SB drivers.... tried playing a DVD... but only getting sound from front speakers. The only way i get the other speakers to produce sound is by setting the DTT3500 to Dolby Pro Logic, where if im not mistaken it generates the extra channels from the main ones?!


So does anybody have a clue what I'm doing wrong?! Or is the SB broken and not producing digital output?! I've set the players to play SPDIF, as also the ac3 config... if i run Creative Diagnostics all is cool...

HELP?!

Correct me if I'm wrong but SB Live! doesn't support Dolby Digital Encoding so you'll only get 5.1 (digitally) if you have an AC3 track and using passthru to the SPDIF connector. In generel I really think that you should ditch the Creative's drivers for kX-Projects ones. The control panel gives you a much better view of what's going on and I've experiences less bugs compared to Creative's ones.
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1
//Danne

I'm not fully sure on that, according to manual and all it's supposed to give either analog or digital 6 channel through the digital output. Then, additionally, according to the onsite help, one can use digital decoding in 3 ways: hardware in the speaker decoder (so yeah, that i can do with the DTT3500), hardware on the live! player 5.1, or using software for it.

But damn i don't really get it. I downloaded those drivers you suggested though, going to give them a go and see what happens!
Thanks already.

Btw here's a link to the manual for the soundcard, see for yourself and let me know what you make of it?!

http://files.europe.creative.com/man...90/English.pdf

that's supposed to be manual to live player 5.1

Update

Just installed those Kx drivers, and am running some mp3 now... altho sucks pretty bad lol. I ran speaker test, in current setup i get sound from all but the center speakers..... the mp3 suxx but me guesses it ain't 5.1 anyway, it's creating some signal from the other channels? (It cracks n all)

actually all speakers r cracking :S

Sounds like your sound card shares an IRQ address or you're experiencing the wonders of high PCI latency or did you forget to adjust volume, surround settings and hardware acceleration?
The kX-drivers has worked fine on like 20 comps ranging from 400Mhz up to 2.4Ghz for me and for many others.
The SB Live! lacks a Dolby Digital Encoder and that's why you cannot always get digital 5.1 (hence the fuss about nVidia Soundstorm). There are some "AC3 on the fly" filters available but none of them works good.

//Danne

what should that be set for?

I figured out the distortion, that was simple overload, i'd accidentally moved the volume sliders to +12 instead of 0. Changing that solved it. I did adjust center speaker volume though. Using the Speaker test option in kX all work but the center.

So what SHOULD i get then to get all this to work properly? The DTT3500 control unit is supposed to be able to decode digital, so shouldn't that be sufficient? Or should i supply it with an analogue signal from the sb?

Just bought myself Philips Seismic Edge (later model, 5.1) on auction site here. Hope that'll work better, gotten sick of this soundblaster stuff (and reading so many problems bout them in other forums and topics)

Thanks for the help! (And do you think that philips think is a good idea?)