Hi, I've just purchased a nice new shiney Logitech z-5500 set of speakers on something of a whim.
My current Creative Live 5.1 does the job well in powering them, but I want to make use of the digital decoding for dts and dolby digital so need a card with spdif/optical out.
I was thinking a creative audigy 2 zs.
Any ideas or other suggestions?
Ta

There is that inexpensive card that the Dragon uses, which a few people have recommended, the Chaintech AV-710.
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4132
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6537

Thanks for that. I'd actually seen a number of references to the Chaintech AV-710, but unfortunately they seem hard to get hold of here in the uk. I've searched through a number of e-shops over here.

Google hasn't produced anything useful over here and when I tried e-bay, they only list ones over your side of the water in the states.

Cheap, cetainly... unfortunately that saving is negated by the postage.

Thanks anyway for the input.

I've always found that a visit to the makers website can be helpful on this count. Here is where Cahintech says you can find their products in the UK:

http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/dist ... =5&CSNo=70

Maybe one of those vendors carries it... Or maybe not. <shrug>

BTW - When you ask questions like this it's helpful to mention possibilities you've already eliminated up front.

You know, it didn't even occur to me to go to the website of the manufacture.
Suffuring from a senior moment...
I had a look at some of those sites and they were not spectacularly helpful. May email them and see if they do supply the AV-710s and would be willing to sell one to me.
Thanks.

So, I've failed miserably to locate a Chaintech AV-710 here in the UK. I emailed everyone on the Chaintech website. I've only had one reply so far and that was to report that they don't stock them anymore.

So I'm now looking at Terratec Aureon 7.1 PCI Sound Card or Terratec Aureon 5.1 PCI Sound Card. (I've seen one reference to a Terratec soundcard and it's quite old in this forum. There was no mention of it's performance.)

Has anyone got one of these? Know how well they work within KnoppMyth?

Sorry to keep banging on about it... but I want optical digital out for the full fat Dolby Digital 5.1 surround!!!!

... and dts of course and ...

...anyhow you get the picture.

Thank you.

I believe that the HiTech cards will do it:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... C_699.html

I can't give you a recommendation, as I've never used them. So it may be a good idea to look for reviews.

_________________
Mephi
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R5.5
Opteron 2.Ghz
1Gb Ram, 200Gb Maxtor PATA
Avermedia 771 DVB-T
Hauppauge Nova-S2 (waiting to be installed)
MS MCE2 Remote

Thanks Mephi,
Though OCUK doesn't appear to do them now??? I certainly have seen them there. When I follow your link it says the page has expired.
Mind you, for cheap and chearful I've spotted this Asonic card for under £10 at ebyer http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=19728671878&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=98073

Those whove bough it are saying quite good things.

Well, I finally sorted the whole thing out.
I went for the Asonic card.
It needed a little sorting to get it working, but only minor tweeking.

I used ALSAMIXER to unmute the Optical/SPDIF out. This gave me instant sterio optical out, and for DVD's in xine I set the audio to passthrough from Setup/Audio/Speaker Arrangement.

Very happy.

(Now I need to work out how to make xine auto detect DVD's again (somehow I turned that one off) and how to choose between Dolby Digital and dts.)