" It can carry two uncompressed audio channels of up to 48kHz and 20/24 bits, depending. It doesn't have to carry uncompressed audio though, it's just transmission protocol and data link layer standard. A single SPDIF connection can carry a 5.1 surround audio stream if it's encoded with something like DTS and compressed 4:1, and connected to something that knows how to decode it "
How does it carry two audio channels over this wire ?
What does the wire consists out of ?
Is it literally one wire ?
Or are there two ? A plus and a minus ? Where does there appear to be two metal things involved on the wire a pin and something circular... the circular is maybe ground ?
Does it interleave audio signals over the cable ?
So if there are four spdif pins on the x-fi then why the f*ck does it not support 7.1 spdif over these cables ?!
Seems like a delibrate design to limit this piece of hardware.
Apperently creative labs doesn't really believe or want to support 7.1 surround sound.
A custom made cable and plug might be able to carry 7.1 to the receiver.
Lot's of these units sold, so perhaps this is an interesting commercial endavouer if somebody can make it work.
Not sure if it's totally worth it.
I did complete my experiments with laptop and pc and receiver and speakers etc.
Got everything working they way I wanted.
Have not experiment with spdif but did experiment with hdmi.
There is a slight sound improvement over hdmi... but probably not worth all the effort.
The main reason why the laptop sounded better was probably the surround sound mode.
It was set to 7 ch stereo, which made it sound really loud... plus perhaps dynamic eq and dynamic volume was on on the receiver.
This probably caused 3d positions sounds which are very weak and normally not hearable suddenly hearable which was very interesting for warcraft frozen throne...
All kinds of sounds were noticeable... which would normally probably be too low volume...
So lot's of audio quality is actually being lost by 3D audio technology in games itself...
Not sure what... maybe footsteps... or special sound effects... kinda weird.
For now I like positional audio best for world of warships so will stick with HDP direct.
Another possibility is multi channel 7.1 which would allow audio processing like dynamic eq/volume but this makes it harder to tell how far enemies truely are... bit degrades the 3d position information a bit... cause of volume adjustments.
Thx for the reply.
Bye, Skybuck.