• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Digital output (newbie alert)

K

kur1j

Gawd
Joined
Sep 13, 2003
Messages
682
Ok I am curious what the orange cord (digital input/output) does for my speakers. I finally got my desktop back up and running and have an older SoundBlaster 5.1 Life (probably upgraded soon).

Anyways I was hooking up my klipsch promedia ultras that I LOVE. I was hooking the speakers up and plugged the green to green, black to black, and the orange to orange from the amp to the soundcard. What exactly does the orange plug control? I know it says "Digital out" on my sound card but the speakers seem to work great without the orange cable even plugged up. When I plug the orange cable up and then in my soundcard settings I check the box for "Digital out" or whatever its called I get no sound at all. Uncheck the box and I get sound :-/. Just kinda curious what it controls. Thanks :).
 
kur1j said:
Ok I am curious what the orange cord (digital input/output) does for my speakers. I finally got my desktop back up and running and have an older SoundBlaster 5.1 Life (probably upgraded soon).

Anyways I was hooking up my klipsch promedia ultras that I LOVE. I was hooking the speakers up and plugged the green to green, black to black, and the orange to orange from the amp to the soundcard. What exactly does the orange plug control? I know it says "Digital out" on my sound card but the speakers seem to work great without the orange cable even plugged up. When I plug the orange cable up and then in my soundcard settings I check the box for "Digital out" or whatever its called I get no sound at all. Uncheck the box and I get sound :-/. Just kinda curious what it controls. Thanks :).
Click to expand...
Is it the Orange RCA Cord? The one that looks like a Normal TV Audio/Video Cable?

If so, that is SPDIF (Sony / Philips Digital Interface) and it sends uncompressed sound data to a reciever. Basically, you need to have a reciever to decode it's data.

IIRC.
 
Here's my guess...

The orange cable serves as your center channel / subwoofer when the digital output is not checked in the software (ie analog center / subwoofer channel). The green is probably your front left and right speakers, and the black is probably the rear left and right. Check if you get any sound out of the center channel when you unplug the orange one.

When you enable digital, it shuts off the analog output and outputs digital via the orange jack. Digital simply means that you have all the channels running through the orange jack, but you need to decode that in some way for your speakers to understand, which you can't do with the Ultra 5.1's (I assumed 5.1's and not Ultra 2.0 since you're hooking up 3 cables here) unless you run it through a receiver or some such first.

When I say "all channels" I probably mean 2 channels (front left / right for the SB Live), but digital output is capable of outputting every channel in a surround sound system (up to 7.1 channels I reckon) if there is something to decode it on the other end. I think the SB Live only does 2 channels, as the X-Fi only does 2 channels for games (no support for Dolby Digital Live).
 
kur1j said:
Ok I am curious what the orange cord (digital input/output) does for my speakers. I finally got my desktop back up and running and have an older SoundBlaster 5.1 Life (probably upgraded soon).

Anyways I was hooking up my klipsch promedia ultras that I LOVE. I was hooking the speakers up and plugged the green to green, black to black, and the orange to orange from the amp to the soundcard. What exactly does the orange plug control? I know it says "Digital out" on my sound card but the speakers seem to work great without the orange cable even plugged up. When I plug the orange cable up and then in my soundcard settings I check the box for "Digital out" or whatever its called I get no sound at all. Uncheck the box and I get sound :-/. Just kinda curious what it controls. Thanks :).
Click to expand...

For 5.1 multimedia speakers the typical colors are...

Green for the Front Left/Right channels
Black for the Rear Left/Right channels
Orange for the Center and Subwoofer

With the Live 5.1, when running in analog mode the Orange plug outputs the signal to the center/sub.
When you check the "digital out" box the soundcard shuts off ALL analog output and the Orange plug is used for digital audio.
 
totally forgot about this thread :(.

Was kinda curious how I could test my center speaker. I have yet to hear anything out of it even though I know it is good. Would I have to have something encoded in 5.1 for it to work? Meaning music won't play through the center channel (I am assuming this)?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top