Cable to use for HD audio?

Hey guys,

I got the evga 680i motherboard, and I was curious about the audio capabilities of the "7.1 HD audio". In particular about what cables to use?

First off, I have an old JVC Home theater in a box, that sucks, so Im going to upgrading this with a real receiver & speakers this weekend. Right now i have my pc hooked up to my reciever via optical connection.

Now on the optical, I cant seem to control my audio volume from my PC. I have turned up and down the audio but no difference. Is this normal on the optical output?

If so, when I get the new receiver, I want to use the s/PDIF coax connection. However, my motherboard doesnt have a COAX out. Any idea what cable I can use to connect it to my reciever??

I checked monoprice.com (which i just ordered a TV mount for sooo cheap!!!), but I couldnt find any cables that do mini plug to coax, which I think is the cable I need.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Looking at the specs on your board you only have optical out. That will pass Dolby Pro Logic II and so forth. If I remember correctly Optical cannot pass DTS but DPLII is great sound and most moveis come in this anyway.

Optical is not quite as good as Digital Coax, but every reciever (as long as its a reciever and not a cheapo built in dvd / reciever) should have a minimum of one Optical if not more. Just assign one of them to your PC input and your set.

Optical/Digital there is no volume control, that would has to be handled by your receiver. As far as best cable, optical vs. coax I've never seen anything saying one is vastly different than the other, other than flexibility of cable and cost vs. length. It will pass whatever formats supported by the chipset. I have an HTPC with an Xplosion card in it that does DTS just fine.

Optical and coax are the same thing, just different methods.

Ripskin said:

Looking at the specs on your board you only have optical out. That will pass Dolby Pro Logic II and so forth. If I remember correctly Optical cannot pass DTS but DPLII is great sound and most moveis come in this anyway.

Optical is not quite as good as Digital Coax, but every reciever (as long as its a reciever and not a cheapo built in dvd / reciever) should have a minimum of one Optical if not more. Just assign one of them to your PC input and your set.

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Seriously, if your cable distance isn't too long just hook everything up with analog cables. You'll be able to control your volume from the PC and you will not have to worry about the limitations of the digital outputs.

When I changed from using optical to coax much audio quality improved, might just be the quality in the reciever, but it did the same (not so drastically) when we changed a few out at work for demo's. The sub had more oomph to it and the audio sounded a little more crisp. Again, could just be the recievers but I found coax to sound slightly better.

Can anyone else confirm that the evga 680i motherboard has no coax digital out?

PCMusicGuy said:

Seriously, if your cable distance isn't too long just hook everything up with analog cables. You'll be able to control your volume from the PC and you will not have to worry about the limitations of the digital outputs.

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Whats the advantage of the digital then? seems like the analog has soo many wires..? Will it sound better via 6 analog connections vs. 1 digital SPDIF

Ripskin said:

When I changed from using optical to coax much audio quality improved, might just be the quality in the reciever, but it did the same (not so drastically) when we changed a few out at work for demo's. The sub had more oomph to it and the audio sounded a little more crisp. Again, could just be the recievers but I found coax to sound slightly better.

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I would think it has to be your receiver, as it's the same digital signal conveyed over different method. The information is no different.

vnr111 said:

Whats the advantage of the digital then? seems like the analog has soo many wires..? Will it sound better via 6 analog connections vs. 1 digital SPDIF

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It really depends on what your doing with it and what sound card/onboard audio your using but no there isn't much reason to use analog out over digital. You want your reciever doing all of the decoding rather then the PC because the reciever is going to do a much better job at it.

vnr111 said:

Can anyone else confirm that the evga 680i motherboard has no coax digital out?

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You should be able to add your own pretty easily. The [H] Review says "S/PDIF headers are located along the left edge of the board..." so you should be able to easily make your own coax out by hacking up a couple of old header connector and cables, or buying something like this.

Ripskin said:

If I remember correctly Optical cannot pass DTS but DPLII is great sound and most moveis come in this anyway.

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Wrong and wrong. Optical can pass DTS just fine. Also, DVDs use Dolby Digital, which is a true 5.1 channel signal (each channel is encoded separately), and not dolby prologic 2 which uses a matrixed system to extract a 5 channel signal from a 2 channel source.