Help me to not buy the wrong audio cable!

[Freakitchen]

Hi fellas.

I recently set up an HTPC for a friend of mine - it has an ASUS AMD motherboard (M4A785D-M Pro) with on-board everything. Currently got it connected to his Samsung TV with HDMI, and the motherboard passes the audio as well as the video through the cable.

This weekend, he bought a Bose 3-2-1 system and obviously wants to connect the HTPC to it. the Bose has port labeled 'Optical In' for a 5.1 signal, and the motherboard has a SPDIF out next to the HDMI port - presumably an alternative to the audio routed through HDMI. Am I right in thinking a standard optical audio cable will work for this, or do I need something different?

Cheers,

 

[alex24]

Nope, a standard SPDIF optical cable should do the trick. Just make sure you change the default speaker to SPDIF rather than HDMI. Whether that's a windows setting or a BIOS setting on that board, I don't know.

 

[Freakitchen]

Thanks for that. I think it may be a combination of both - there's definitely a BIOS setting for enable HDMI audio, but I'll look into that side of things.

 

[jellybeard999]

Leave the bios setting alone and just change it in the OS.