Realtek SPDIF Optical Output Problem

Hi guys,

I have done a quick search of these forums, and could not find anything directly relevant, so here is my problem, any help would be greatly appreciated. I am using a Zepto Znote 6224W laptop, which has the Realtek HD Audio 7.1 soundcard integrated into it (rubbish i know, i have an external card on the way). It has a combined heaphone out/spdif socket, which i have been using with a standard 3.5mm jack to RCA adapter, but there was a fair amount of interference. The laptop is running windows vista 32bit and foobar ASIO.

I have now plugged in an optical cable to connect up to my Beresford DAC, but i cannot get any sound output at all. I have trawled through all the sound settings in both the realtek application and vista sound panel, but with no luck. I have set ASIO4all to utilise the Realtek SPDIF and have even tried with DirectSound with no luck. I also tried playing a DVD through VLC and selecting use SPDIF if available and an AC3 filter, but still no sound!

This started out as a temporary quick fix for the poor sound quality untill my external sound card arrived, but now it has become something i must emerge from victorious, but somehow, even after a few hours of tinkering, reinstalling drivers, software and the like, i just cannot figure out on my own.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Hugh

 

The problem is with Vista as Microsoft's latest operating system hates SPDIF output. Downgrading to Windows XP Pro and enabling SPDIF pass-through will allow the Beresford DAC to receive data from your laptop. You have till June 30th to buy Windows XP Pro SP2 if you decide to use this option.

 

Thanks for the info gremlin, but surely there must be a way around this that does not involve uninstalling vista?

 

Theirs no way to get around it. Peter Gutmann has a good article that goes into the details of Vista's content protection. It can be found here.

 

Ok, well as we all know, when you are faced with a problem like this, it required going back to basics... I had tried the cable and DAC on a different laptop and it had worked perfectly, so i assumed that the cable and DAC were fine and that the problem was isolated to my laptop. Well, as it turns out, the connector on the 3.5mm adapter was just a little dodgy and having removed it and switched it with the another one, it all works perfectly!