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Sound Blaster X-FI Xtreme optical input 5.1 surround?

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Hey everyone,

I have a SB X-FI Xtreme in my gaming rig, and since my new monitor has a few extra HDMI connectors I would like to setup my PS3 on my desk. When I run the optical out of the PS3 to the optical input on the sound card, I get audio no problem, but only in stereo. If I have the PS3 output 5.1 all I get is a high pitched scream.

I'd love to be able to pipe the PS3 audio through my computer so I can take advantage of my 5.1 hedphones.

I'm sure this is a driver/decoding software issue, but Creative doesn't offer any support on this issue, and there are only options in the control panel for stereo bit/sample rates for the optical SPDIF in.

Thoughts? And third party software solutions?

Thanks!

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It's not a PS3 issue. It seems like the sound card itself doesn't have the codec, etc to decode 5.1 on the optical input. But, it will output 5.1 on the optical out, so the card is capable of it.

I figure it is a driver limitation or something, but perhaps someone knows of a workaround.

hi TheScorcho,

few things you could try if you haven’t already,

If os is win7/vista, try lowering your pc sound bitrates to dvd quality, it may be a problem with being set too low or high when dealing with surround.

Match the bitrates of your ps3 and computer.

In the ps3 sound settings menus, try adjust the quality you may think is too high causing your sound card problem. Could try reverting ps3's sound settings back to f.default.

Try setting the ps3 only to spdif and not both spdif and hdmi when connecting to your sound card via spdif.

The surround 5.1 codec used by your sound card and ps3 is pcm, there shouldn’t be any reason for a codec conflict.

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Thanks for the good information!

I am running Win 7 64 bit.

I had set the bitrate to 48k (DVD quality) on the spdif input and set the PS3 to only output on the Toslink. I had selected Dobly 5.1 as the output format, but perhaps DTS 5.1 would work better.

I'll check it out in a bit and let you know what I turn up.

Thanks again.

Well, set the PS3 audio output to:

Dolby Digital and DTS and neither option helped. I tried all the different option for bitrates on teh sound card end and no good either.

More forum searching revealed I'm one of many people who are trying to do this to no avail.

Apparently surround decoding is disabled on toslink inputs.

I read one person who said he got it to work by hacking Windows Media Player to recognize the toslink input as a local stream then having it convert the Dolby Digital for output to 5.1 through AC3, but his info seemed scetchy and completely unverifiable.

Oh well. If anyone else has some good ideas, feel free to let me know!
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