I am interested to buy a Creative SB0466\046A X-Fi ExtremeGamer Falta1ty Pro sound card but I'm holding back because I don't know whether the SC could be connected to my AV amplifier through a toslink optical cable. I have an old AV amp which has one available toslink optical input and this amp is connected to 5.1 speakers. I intend to buy this SC to upgrade my crappy Gigabyte onboard sound.

From the pictures posted in the various threads, I noticed that there are 4 ports on the SC but none seems to be a toslink port.

Can anyone enlighten me whether a toslink opticable cable can be connected directly to the X-Fi Falta1ty Pro SC and if so, through which one of the 4 ports? Or must I get a toslink adapter (toslink to 3.5mm jack) to connect to the SC?

This post has been edited by sharp56: Dec 29 2008, 02:57 PM

Does that mean that I have to buy a front I/O panel and how much would it cost? Would it be possible (albeit cheaper) if I were to buy a toslink adapter shown below to connect to the spdif port of the SC? Anyone done this with good results?

I just bought an OEM X-FI Elite Pro Sound card and I have an HTPC set up of a pioneer amp (with inbuilt DTS/DD decoder), a LCD TV and a 5.1 speaker system.

I used a 3.5mm jack to RCA cable (red and white) to connect from the topper most hole (flexijack digital IO) of the SC to the Coaxial input of my amp using only the red cable (white cable produces no sound). I have set the speakers system in the Creative Console Launcher to 5.1 speakers and the digital IO to flexijack i.e top hole. In the Creative Console Control Panel, I have also set the bitstream to external decoder. I have also installed the DTS hack that comes along with the driver into my windows XP. I have also disabled my on-board sound system in my BIOS.

But I'm only able to get 2 channel stereo sound. I use the speaker test in the Console Launcher and I could only hear sound in my 2 front speakers only.

Question:
1. Why can't I get 5.1 channel/DTS/DD sound? Is it because of the 3.5mm to RCA cable that cannot support digital medium or something that I have done wrong?

2. The other alternative is to get 3 sets of 3.5mm RCA cable and plug in all three of them into the 2nd, 3rd and 4th holes of the SC and the amp. The 2nd hole will activate the front 2 speakers, the 3rd hole will activate the back 2 speakers and the 4th hole will activate the front speakers and sub-woofer. This means that I have to activate analogue mode in my amp. I have not tried this alternative yet as I need to buy the three 3.5mm to RCA cables and therefore I don't know the 5.1 channel will work in this case.

Is the 2nd (analogue) alternative better than the 1st (digital) alternative above?

Please share how to connect your Elite Pro to your amp in your HTPC system. Admittedly, the sound from the Elite Pro (so far only hearing 2 channel stereo sound) is a much improvement over my on-board sound. However, in my previous on-board sound system I connect an optical cable to my amp and my amp has no problem in detecting and playing 5.1 channel/DTS/DD sound at all unlike the present Elite Pro.

This post has been edited by sharp56: Feb 26 2010, 04:42 PM

Thanks for the feedback, Najmods and Coolkwc. Perhaps Coolkwc is right - the X-Fi card only support 2 channel PCM. I have changed it for a Asus Xonar DX and now I am able to get 5.1 channel sound on my amp connected to the sound card with optical cable.

The sound of Xonar DX is comparable to X-Fi Elite Pro - equally good!