Sound occasionally breaking up over SP/DIF

MikeHunt79 · 7 Sep 2010 at 03:24

Ok, I'm not really sure if this is cable or computer related, but I'm using a rather long Co-ax cable for digital sound from my computer to a DEQ2496, it's around 5 metres long. I'm not using a fancy soundcard, I'm just using the onboard sound on my mother board (Gigabyte P965 DS3)

Now 90% of the time it works with no problems, but occasionally the sound breaks up, it goes stuttery, it's hard to describe but the next time it happens I'll see if I can record how bad it is. It seems occur more often when my computer is doing something intensive, but I have no idea why this is. I have other digital and analogue sources plugged into my DEQ also, but these work with no problems, so it's either my PC or the SPDIF cable.

Is there a maximum length a SPDIF cable can be? I've ordered a 5 metre TOSLINK optical cable so I can see if this is cable or computer related, but optical is restricted to 48KHz for uncompressed sound isn't it so I'd rather get the SPDIF working if I could.

BloodyL · 7 Sep 2010 at 03:55

Are you using standard PCM output or do you use stuff like DTS Connect or Dolby Digital Live?

Shadows1990 · 7 Sep 2010 at 08:04

I get something very similar to your problem Mike.
I have the Realtek HD Audio chip on my laptop, and when using the SPDIF, it occasionally will drop and then continue as normal.
The only thing I've found that helps is if I remove the undervolt on the CPU. But this doesn't fix it fully, just makes it occur less.

MikeHunt79 · 7 Sep 2010 at 10:41

BloodyL said:
Are you using standard PCM output or do you use stuff like DTS Connect or Dolby Digital Live?

Hi, I'm using PCM, just listening to music mainly but also using DAW type apps.

Shadows1990 said:
I get something very similar to your problem Mike.
I have the Realtek HD Audio chip on my laptop, and when using the SPDIF, it occasionally will drop and then continue as normal.
The only thing I've found that helps is if I remove the undervolt on the CPU. But this doesn't fix it fully, just makes it occur less.

Interesting, maybe I would have been better off posting this in Sound City... Anyway, I'll try giving the CPU some more voltage and see if this fixes things.