[james.miller]

Originally posted by bigemike
hey grunjee, go buy a $20 optical cable and hook up your z-680's with that to you nf7-s and try it. I couln't say that my audigy was better once I hooked up the z-680's optically to my nf7-s. All I can say is that it is alot better than analog or coaxial digital. let me know what you think. I am interested becouse I am comparing and audigy gamer to the nf7-s and I think the nf7-s rules, and the optical made it that much better. Not hooking them up optically is stepping back a few years in sound quality.

there is no way that optical can be better than co-ax unless a) you used a cheap co-ax cable, or b) your speakers perform better with optical for some reason.

to get optical out, co-ax has to be converted from electrical >> optical and at the other end of the cable, Optical >> electrical. Asuming everything is in working order, optical can only sound worse, since you have to deal with 2 extra conversion processes. (the difference may be so small that you can't actually hear it - but its there.

[bigemike]

when I am comparing the three seperate inputs (analog 6ch) on my audigy with the analog outputs on my nf7-s the soundstorm sounds as good or better than the audigy. But when I hooked up the single fibre optic cable for digital my sound improved quite alot from anything I had before. I never could get my audigy to work with the spdif output, is there a special cable needed or what. I tried a mono headphone jack to rca adapter from radio shack and I could only here like 4 channels or something. Anyone have an idea on how to hook this up. Let me know if anyone has the laydown on that.

secondly if the rca style input is cleaner than the optical I would like to hear some more about that as well. I figured the 0 resistance of the optical cable would have to be the best.

Plus that little l\red light amazes people when you tell them it makes all that music pumping out of my z-680's

I did get a little hiss through my speakers when I went optical that I didn't have in analog 6ch input. Let me know if anyone has expierianced it.

[Audioaficionado]

I mainly use my Soundstorm for playing high bit mp3s on my main audio system using the analog stereo outputs. Sounds better than my SB Live 5.1 but it's not audiophile quality by a long shot. Someday I'll try the digital feed.

[weponhead]

In reply to earlier , "heat on a audigy causes crackling in some games" Really? i never knew that .. That explains the kinda fuzzieness i get when playing AA for a long time ! lol MORE COOLING!

[pauldriver]

Originally posted by bigemike
I never could get my audigy to work with the spdif output, is there a special cable needed or what.

I don't think that the Audigy does Dolby Digital AC3 Encoding, yeah according to this link http://soundblaster.com/products/audigy/specs.asp the Audigy does Digital PCM output only.

[edit] The smoking gun http://dmzweb4.europe.creative.com/u...ve_ac3dd12.htm I linked this from a Audigy FAQ, so apparently neither the Live! or the Audigy do AC3 encoding.

A lot of Dolby Digital products won't handle a raw PCM input. The Creative speakers that are designed for digital PCM input won't handle a Dolby Digital AC3 input at all.

Paul.

[D $hady]

Originally posted by weponhead
In reply to earlier , "heat on a audigy causes crackling in some games" Really? i never knew that .. That explains the kinda fuzzieness i get when playing AA for a long time ! lol MORE COOLING!

I got a suggestion in another thread: http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showth...adid=205651... look at the last post. Doing this (changing settings in device manager; still no heatsink) solved my crackling problems when playing BF1942. Hopefully it will help some others out too!