Sound card with optical out

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:08

After a new sound card and needs to have optical out, any suggestions?

Budget upto £75

Marsman · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:13

Take your pick. All Xonar's and current X-Fi cards have optical.

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:33

Not many seem to have the optical out connection on the back. Will keep looking

Andrew Moore · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:35

The DG has it and at £21 for the OEM its an absolute steal!

MikeHunt79 · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:36

USB or PCI-e? The Emu 0404 USB has both optical in and out but is a little over budget...

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:40

Andrew Moore said:
The DG has it and at £21 for the OEM its an absolute steal!

Thanks

Do you have a link to that card Andrew

MikeHunt79 said:
USB or PCI-e? The Emu 0404 USB has both optical in and out but is a little over budget...

USB or PCI Mike, not really fussed as long as it works well. 5.1 will do although 7.1 would be a bonus.

Auraomega · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:48

CS||nuTs said:
Not many seem to have the optical out connection on the back. Will keep looking

Every card these days has optical out on the back...

Marsman · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:49

CS||nuTs said:
Not many seem to have the optical out connection on the back. Will keep looking

They do. Most use mini toslink, and come with an adaptor to connect a regular toslink type. Mini toslink is basically a 3.5mm jack shape. The sockets look like any other 3.5mm socket, which fools a lot of people into thinking the card in particular doesn't have optical out.

Would be useful for those who don't know this, if the description stated that the card has optical out capability.

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:50

Sorry my fault should have been clearer, needs to be Toslink optical out

Andrew Moore · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:50

CS||nuTs said:
Thanks

Do you have a link to that card Andrew

USB or PCI Mike, not really fussed as long as it works well. 5.1 will do although 7.1 would be a bonus.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-012-AS for OEM at £19.99 until wednesday where it becomes £20.99

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-011-AS&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat= £26.99 for retail which includes the box as the added extra.

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 14:52

Marsman said:
They do. Most use mini toslink, and come with an adaptor to connect a regular toslink type. Mini toslink is basically a 3.5mm jack shape. The sockets look like any other 3.5mm socket, which fools a lot of people into thinking the card in particular doesn't have optical out.

Would be useful for those who don't know this, if the description stated that the card has optical out capability.

ahhh i see, beat me to it. So would my Creative X-FI Fatality FPS have this?

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:05

The back of my current card which would be the optical out connection?

Marsman · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:11

No sadly. I have an Xtreme Music. Before and up to around the time when the X-Fi was released, Creative cards required a separate device. Either a 5.25" live drive, external box, such as which came with the X-Fi Elite, or a module which had SPDIF connections. Not until Xonar's, X-Fi Titanium and Xtreme Gamer appeared, did cards have these mini toslink 3.5mm sockets.

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:15

Andrew Moore said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-012-AS for OEM at £19.99 until wednesday where it becomes £20.99

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-011-AS&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat= £26.99 for retail which includes the box as the added extra.

Thanks Andrew

So will they come with the 3.5mm adapter to connect to Toslink?

Marsman · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:23

Yep. I also have a DG, but mine actually has a normal toslink socket. I suppose Asus must have updated the design, because it's a 5.1 card, and not 7.1, so doesn't need the extra 3.5mm socket. Either way, you can connect a normal toslink optical cable.

Sparky · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:40

Thankyou for your help guys. ordered the OEM you suggested Andrew.

Boge · 19 Mar 2011 at 16:12

. Before and up to around the time when the X-Fi was released, Creative cards required a separate device. Either a 5.25" live drive, external box, such as which came with the X-Fi Elite, or a module which had SPDIF connections.

Err. Not quite. I have an X-fi with an optical out and an optical in. Its an SB0770 and is an OEM as used by Dell and HP amongst others.

Took me a while to make it work in my current rig with Win 7 64 but I got there eventually and am now enjoying everything in Dolby Digital Live into my Z5500's.

Blows the onboard sound totally.

Marsman · 19 Mar 2011 at 23:20

Boge said:
Err. Not quite. I have an X-fi with an optical out and an optical in. Its an SB0770 and is an OEM as used by Dell and HP amongst others.

The SB0770 was not the first X-Fi. The Xtreme Music came before the SB0770, and thus up until that point, no Creative card had optical ports. The card you have came later, when optical ports were introduced directly onto the card.