"FlexiJack" on the Xi-Fi

[TheOverLord]

Hey guys,

I've got a Xi-Fi XtremeMusic and i've currently got it connected to my speakers (Logitech Z-5400) via 6 channel analogue.

I'm interested in connecting them via optical as well and since this Xi-Fi has a "flexijack" [FlexiJack (Digital In / Digital Out / Line In / Microphone) via 3.50 mm minijack] do i just use an optical cable with an adaptor (e.g. Optical Adapter ODT Jack - 3.5mm Optical Plug) so i can get dolby surround (for movies ) or do i need that creative front bay thing (which i really don't to get).

Cheers

 

[caksey]

I've just been down this road!

Got a X-Fi extreme music and wanted to INPUT a 5.1 signal from my XBOX360. Bought the flexijack adapter from the US, but no joy. Control panel read 'invalid signal'.

Then bought the Fata1ty front drive bay, still no joy. Still got 'invalid signal'. Fed in the 5.1 optical from my Sky+ box, stereo ok, but 5.1? Nope - invalid signal.

Gave up and bought an external AV amp and speaker setup. Now all I wanted was the 5.1 optical output from the X-Fi.

Guess what? - X-fi will not output dolby digital 5.1. It will output EAX which is creatives version of dobly digital but no DD5.1, as creative dont have a dolby licence!!! If you play a dvd on ** PC you can get the DD5.1 output as the Dolby licence is tied to the disc. If you play a downloaded movie on a media player under windows then you dont get the DD5.1 output.

 

[Phil99]

There's no real point using S/PDIF unless the DACs in your amp/receiver are better than the ones on the card - chances are with a logitech set they aren't. You can get 5.1 from movies perfectly over analogue though, so you haven't lost anything - just get the card to decode it, or just something like AC3Filter/ffdshow.

To clarify what caksey says about DD5.1; the card will output Dolby or DTS bitstreams as they are if you're playing a pre-encoded source, however the card does not have a dolby digital live (or dts interactive) encoder so can only output PCM (stereo) over S/PDIF from 'live' sources like games.

Additionally you'd have to use co-ax for S/PDIF as the flexijack isn't optical, unless you have the Xtreme Gamer.