- Sep 8, 2015
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- 4,510
SETUP
I have a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi external USB sound card hooked up to my laptop, with a toslink cable going from the sound card to my Samsung HT-F5500W home theater. I'm using an HDMI to send the video directly from my laptop to my TV.
PROBLEM
I used to have my laptop hooked up to my home theater with an HDMI, with another HDMI from that to my TV... But I thought maybe if I hooked the HDMI directly to my TV for the video, then I could use the Optical Audio Out on my external sound card to get better audio through my home theater...
So I hooked the sound card to the home theater using a fiber optic audio cable, but cannot get ANY audio now, let alone surround sound, which I was hoping for... I made sure the cable was transmitting (I saw the red light at the tip of the cable) before I secured it into the Digital In port on my home theater and set its input to Digital In (I made sure it wasn't muted (duh). Then, I opened my audio devices on my PC and set the SPDIF-Out device as the default device. I then went into its properties and under the Supported Formats tab, checked DTS Audio, Dolby Digital, and Microsoft WMA Pro Audio. I selected only the 48 kHz sample rate before moving on to the Sound Blaster tab, from which I opened the Settings menu. First, I clicked the Speakers tab and selected 5.1 Speakers from the drop-down list. Next, I clicked the THX TruStudio Pro tab and enabled all options except Smart Volume. Lastly, I clicked on the Encoder tab and checked the Enable Dolby Digital Live checkbox... I then tested the setup with a range of media including music, games, youtube videos, and even tried my DAW, but no dice. I am not getting any sound and can't figure out why. I get normal audio when I use headphones on the sound card, so something must be getting lost in translation between there and my surround sound. Where did I go wrong?
I have a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi external USB sound card hooked up to my laptop, with a toslink cable going from the sound card to my Samsung HT-F5500W home theater. I'm using an HDMI to send the video directly from my laptop to my TV.
PROBLEM
I used to have my laptop hooked up to my home theater with an HDMI, with another HDMI from that to my TV... But I thought maybe if I hooked the HDMI directly to my TV for the video, then I could use the Optical Audio Out on my external sound card to get better audio through my home theater...
So I hooked the sound card to the home theater using a fiber optic audio cable, but cannot get ANY audio now, let alone surround sound, which I was hoping for... I made sure the cable was transmitting (I saw the red light at the tip of the cable) before I secured it into the Digital In port on my home theater and set its input to Digital In (I made sure it wasn't muted (duh). Then, I opened my audio devices on my PC and set the SPDIF-Out device as the default device. I then went into its properties and under the Supported Formats tab, checked DTS Audio, Dolby Digital, and Microsoft WMA Pro Audio. I selected only the 48 kHz sample rate before moving on to the Sound Blaster tab, from which I opened the Settings menu. First, I clicked the Speakers tab and selected 5.1 Speakers from the drop-down list. Next, I clicked the THX TruStudio Pro tab and enabled all options except Smart Volume. Lastly, I clicked on the Encoder tab and checked the Enable Dolby Digital Live checkbox... I then tested the setup with a range of media including music, games, youtube videos, and even tried my DAW, but no dice. I am not getting any sound and can't figure out why. I get normal audio when I use headphones on the sound card, so something must be getting lost in translation between there and my surround sound. Where did I go wrong?
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