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X-Fi Titanium HD - 2.0 (Stereo) Over TOSLINK

Are you needing anything from the creative suite? If not the driver alone may get you what you need. I am able to change the rate under SPDIF to 96k, and can assign SPDIF to default so games can use the volume normally.
 
With my Titanium card, I have 2 audio devices, 1 for the analog headphone output, one for the digital TOSLINK.

I can send 2.0 signals to my hifi, using the Windows built in control panel, you can use a check box system to say max and supported sample rates, no dts decoding on the receiving item, etc, to get 2.0 signals out of it.

And have an independent analogue output. Not sure why yours is being so silly.
 
Skakruk said:
I never installed the suite.

So you have the same model card? You set "SPDIF Out" to the default device and sound works in games? Can you mute "Speakers" and still get sound from "SPDIF Out"?



It does show two separate devices in the Windows 'Sound' CP, and they can both provide a signal simultaneously, but the digital "SPDIF Out" doesn't act like a completely independent device. The analogue "Speakers" device is the only one that can act as a default system device, and the "SPDIF Out" can only forward/clone the contents of the "Speakers" device ('Play stereo mix using digital output' must be enabled).

If i disable 'Play stereo mix using digital output' and set "SPDIF Out" as the default device, games don't acknowledge it and I get nothing but silence.

If I want the "SPDIF Out" to play all system sounds, 'Play stereo mix using digital output' must be enabled, which ties it's volume to "Speakers". I can turn down the volume of "SPDIF Out" without affecting the level of the analogue out, but turning down the volume of "Speakers" will simultaneously reduce the volume of the "SPDIF Out" digital signal, because as I said, "SPDIF Out" will just be a clone of "Speakers".

The only way for the "SPDIF Out" to be used independently, is if you disable 'Play stereo mix using digital output' and specifically tell a certain program (like Foobar 2000) to use "SPDIF Out"as it's output device. Then "SPDIF Out" volume will be independantly controllable, but it will output nothing but the sources you have specifically assigned to it. I think there are hardly any games that allow to to specify exactly which audio device to use - they all just look for the default device, and as I said, when the "SPDIF Out" is the default device, the games don't use it anyway.

Further reading suggests that this is normal behavior for this card.
Click to expand...

Yes, same model.You must have installed drivers from the CD then and it installed everything by default. Try right click disabling, not just muting, the speakers (analogue) in windows cp and setting SPDIF to default.

I would also go into the creative panel and turn everything off any special modes like gaming, 3d, and crystalizer. Having the card make an artifical 5.1, then down converting it into a stereo signal will surely result in loss of quality.
 
According to what you say, I have a very unusual card then.

I can assign mine as default, and game sounds come via the optical, when you are using 2.0

I run just the drivers from the website, nothing else like mediasource etc etc
 
I specify 2.0 buy saying the reciever cannot accept DD or DTS, and running the game in stereo. I don't have a display indicating if it is PCM, but the hifi CANNOT decode DD or DTS, and I get sound, so something must work fine.

When I say I get sound, it was something that happened by accident, when I didn't have my headphones as default output, and it was also a valve game, CSGO I think, so I haven't tested every game. But when I make SPDIF default, it does come from the hifi, with the games I tested!
 
Skakruk said:
I understand how you have it set up now. But bear in mind that you cannot get hardware accelerated OpenAL with EAX that way (which is probably the biggest reason for getting an X-Fi card in the first place).
Click to expand...

I only run the cards line out to my HD595s at the moment.

My plan was to get some better headphones, and then maybe an amplifier if required. Last step would be a DAC, and then and only then would the EAX via TOSLINK become a concern.

At the moment I send music to my hifi, or I should say I did before I built the little NUC, and I could listen to music via hifi and play games via the headphones simultaneously (but not with WASAPI, sometimes computer would hard lock on a new track starting).

I will investigate more into what I can, and cannot do with the TOSLINK.

Next step for me is either AKG 701s or some HD598s maybe, although I really want some more bass than my 595s currently have (for music, I like them for games)
 
Did some testing and here is what I found.

1. The "play stereo mix through digital" option does indeed clear up the sound issues for games, Baldurs Gate Enhanced was one that now works, so assumed it used openAL. Good work.

2. The "play stereo mix through digital" alone does not allow the SPDIF to use the EAX engines, I enabled everything to max and did A/B tests with the SPDIF (Toslink) and RCA connection (Speakers). The former didn't get any effects, the latter did.

3. Enabling Dolby Digital encoding does allow the EAX engines to work on a SPDIF 2.0 setup quite nicely. I threw some 2.0 source material and it handled them fine. However, you give up the ability to upconvert to 96k as DD is a 48k standard. Unless you have source material at 96K (unlikely) this shouldn't matter, I didn't notice a difference with uncompressed FLAC's for instance. This seems to be your best option if you want to play around with the 3d positional stuff (I don't care for it)

4. If you enable DD 5.1 make sure in the games menu you set the number of speakers to 2. Otherwise you will be missing a lot of sound from the center and rears.
 
Skakruk said:
Did you set "Speakers" as the default device? If you still had "SPDIF Out" as default, then the game would probably still be bypassing the hardware acceleration. I have absolutely no doubt that EAX works via "Play Stereo Mix using Digital Output" - I've confirmed this with multiple games. After all, it's just cloning the "Speakers" device, so anything that device gets, "SPDIF Out" will get too.
Click to expand...

Ah, yes that was my problem. I think this is the optimal choice for me at least since you can also get 96k output (if you have a device to support it). I enabled the DD encoder and noticed some slowdown in Diablo 3 in a quick game.
There is an option in the Windows CP (under advanced) for "allowing applications to take exclusive control of device". I haven't messed with it but wonder if this has any bearing on the linked volume controls.
 
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