Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions HTPC, can't get SPDIF out to work.

OK folks, I was all excited today as I finished my HTPC project and put it in my AV rack below my Denon 2805. Everything works great, picture is fantastic, BUTTTTTT

I can't get SPDIF sound to my 2805 to work. The motherboard came with Realtek upto 8 channel sound with SPDIF out coax jacks. BIOS says it is enabled. In the various DVD players I've tried, I have SPDIF turned on, but still no sound.

In my Denon Input Digital assignment menu I have the DVD player set to COAX 1 to match the cable location from the HTPC.

I've looked in XP's Sound settings in control panel and can't find anything. I'm at a loss and frustrated as we were going to have company tonight to watch a movie.

The DVD player has the normal IDE ribbon interface hooked to the motherboard, and the audio jack cable I'm not using, is this ok? I had this player in another computer and never had this cd audio cable hooked up and I always received sound, so I assume the IDE cable to the motherboard passes the sound, if I can figure out what is going on.

Hope someone can help this computer guy that should be able to figure it out.

Here is an old post that shows my hardware further down in the post.

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=first&Number=133210&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1

This is Matt

The only thing I can think of off-hand is to make sure you don't have the SPDIF muted.
Go to Start->Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices
Click on Advanced under Device volume
If the SPDIF balance is not displayed, go to Options->Properties, and put a checkmark in the box next to SPDIF in the list
Under SPDIF, make sure the volume slider is not all the way down, and that it does not show as muted.

If you can't move the slider, then SPDIF really isn't enabled, but let me know if this works.

Thanks Matt,

That was one thing I checked and it looked correct.

I did figure it out though, last night I went out to Nvidia's website and downloaded the latest drivers. For whatever reason, this was the cause of the problem. I uninstalled them, and reinstalled the ones on the CD and I'm good to go..

From a google search, I found another post on AVS from a guy with the same problem on a different motherboard.

Thanks again, Randy

Ahh yes, I had some problems with my soundcard and SPDIF. Drivers are good.

I actually have found that the sound drivers and options are really wierd in windows. I mean, in windows it has an option for SPDIF, but I had it off and it was working fine. It's all in the updated drivers.

Glad to know its working!

Every soundcard/driver seems to handle things like this a lil differently. I'm on my third SPDIF implimentation in my HTPC (upgrades) and each time the driver or soundcard has worked a little differently.

The bottom line is you got it working.

Agreed, you would think the newest drivers would be better, not always the case, newer isn't always better.