A50 + SB Titanium HD

[TetsuNoKobushi]

EDIT: They're working now. After my friend brought over his PC, and tested them in his PC, they seemed to work for him. After putting it back in my PC they suddenly worked as well. It should be noted that he used a Titanium HD as well. Nothing else was changed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey guys,

 

So I now have my A50's and the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium HD's.

 

Now, after some fiddling, I'm still completely oblivious as to which playback device I should be using.

 

Current have the Optical out from my THD's going to the Optical in on my A50 Transmitter. Is this all I need to do? In Titanfall the directional sound sounded really good after I selected 7.1. Especially compared to Razer Surround. The thing is. I'm still using the A50's as a playback device. And not the optical out. I'm fully aware that the Sound Card should be sending a 5.1 signal over optical to the A50 transmitter, which then upscales it to 7.1 and sends it to the headset. Am I doing it right here? Or am I completely being stupid and still messing up?

 

It seems that I also have optical out options in the playback device list, yet whenever I select one of those, nothing happens. No sound or anything. So I'm completely clueless if I did it correctly, and if I should change anything.

 

EDIT: Here's what I posted to Astro on their forums:

 

 

Hi folks of Astro.

I've recently purchased my A50's and they worked brilliantly over the USB connection. After reading a few posts online, I noticed that people were recommending a dedicated soundcard for optical input. Not knowing a thing about these, I did some searching and found that the Titanium HD's would be good for the A50's requirements. 

These came in yesterday and I installed them into my pc along with the latest Firmware directly from Creative's site. After that, I decided to hook the A50 Wireless Transmitter to it and experience the true way it was meant to be used. And that's where it went wrong.

After enabling DDL in the Creative Control Panel, and doing no changes to anything else (5.1 was already selected, and so was SPDIF/Optical Out) I could not get it to work according to the tutorial posted here: 
http://forums.astrogaming.com/showthread.php?37122-ACGG-Post-PC-Configuration-Tutorial

I made sure that the cable was connected to the Optical Out on my soundcard and Optical In on my A50 Transmitter. Yet, when I select the "Speakers (Creative SB X-FI)" I'm getting no sound at all. When I look at the playback devices, it does show that it's transmitting audio, as the volume indicator is going up and down all the time while playing YouTube videos, VLC videos and iTunes music. 

I've even went as far as to check ALL other playback options, including the non-creative ones, and miraculously, the only one working is the direct A50 Transmitter option. Which produces no sound difference at all in terms of directional surround. Neither does the Dolby Button do anything when I press it. 

So hopefully you guys can help me with this, as I'd really like to listen to the headset as intended.

[Biased Opinion]

run USB into the mixamp. I don't see why would want to use both the mixamp and the sound cards since they are technically the same thing. (both dacs).

[Lays]

 

Test it with the soundcard doing 5.1 out and then off your onboard optical, see what sounds best.

 

When I had A50's I plugged em into onboard optical out, seemed like it worked fine to me. 

[TetsuNoKobushi]

run USB into the mixamp. I don't see why would want to use both the mixamp and the sound cards since they are technically the same thing. (both dacs).

 

USB is in the MixAmp, because that provides power to the MixAmp as well as Voice Chat

 

Test it with the soundcard doing 5.1 out and then off your onboard optical, see what sounds best.

 

When I had A50's I plugged em into onboard optical out, seemed like it worked fine to me. 

 

I actually don't have an optical out on my motherboard. I'll be upgrading to the Z97 next month however.

[Biased Opinion]

I mean use the mixamp as the day, there is no reason to be running optical into the thing

[ShearMe]

Not to be completely obvious or anything, but:

 

 

[TetsuNoKobushi]

Not to be completely obvious or anything, but:

[Picture][Picture]

Yeah, that's what I'm trying, but it doesn't seem to work. I connected it to my Optical Out on my soundcard and Optical in on my A50 Transmitter. Seemed like the logical way to do it. Then switch playback device to SPDIF Out in Playback devices.

 

After that, I can clearly see the volume going up and down in the Playback devices indicating sound is coming from the output, but nothing is being sent to my A50's it seems. I tried turning it off and on etc, no help. So I'm still doing something wrong here.

[TetsuNoKobushi]

Bump. Still could use help =[

[ShearMe]

Yeah, that's what I'm trying, but it doesn't seem to work. I connected it to my Optical Out on my soundcard and Optical in on my A50 Transmitter. Seemed like the logical way to do it. Then switch playback device to SPDIF Out in Playback devices.

 

After that, I can clearly see the volume going up and down in the Playback devices indicating sound is coming from the output, but nothing is being sent to my A50's it seems. I tried turning it off and on etc, no help. So I'm still doing something wrong here.

 

In windows sound settings, right-click -> show disabled devices, then take a screen shot for us.

[TetsuNoKobushi]

Here's a pic of the Sound window. The last one in the list is my TV which I use as a second screen. This TV is connected through HDMI. Having it plugged it or not makes no difference to the results. 

 

 

Here's one where I did everything according to the setup guide on the Astro Forums. As you can see, Audio is playing, and it is sending, but I can't hear anything

 

[ShearMe]

Have you check the soundcard drivers of any settings that might be affecting things? Have you tried reinstalling said drivers?

 

Might just be a bad optical port or soundcard.

[TetsuNoKobushi]

Checked them, installed them, reinstalled them and removed them again. Not a single option seems to work.

 

The optical port works fine with the 5.1 set downstairs. So it has to be some kind of configuration I'm doing wrong

[ShearMe]

Are you using different Optical cables for upstairs and downstairs? 

 

It could just as easily be a bad port on the mixer as on the soundcard. Not like there's a huge problem with using analog connections so long as you have the PC doing the virtual audio grunt work.

[Silent_R493]

you have to use optical as default when optical is used.   At lease that what i did when i use to use Trittion AX 720+ on my pc.   The PC will try to use USB for sound even when both were plugged in.  also try disabling everything but the sound card and the headset.  you won't need the onboard since you have a sound card.

 

in my situation i never got the decoder box to output Dolby it only AMP'd the sound louder then USB.

[TetsuNoKobushi]

Are you using different Optical cables for upstairs and downstairs? 

 

It could just as easily be a bad port on the mixer as on the soundcard. Not like there's a huge problem with using analog connections so long as you have the PC doing the virtual audio grunt work.

Same cables for the sake of testing. Yeah, but the thing is. If it sticks with just USB audio. I wasted 120 bucks on that soundcard.

 

you have to use optical as default when optical is used.   At lease that what i did when i use to use Trittion AX 720+ on my pc.   The PC will try to use USB for sound even when both were plugged in.  also try disabling everything but the sound card and the headset.  you won't need the onboard since you have a sound card.

 

in my situation i never got the decoder box to output Dolby it only AMP'd the sound louder then USB.

 

I'm trying that. The sounds seem to play, and the volume goes up, as depicted in the screenshot, but there is no sound whatsoever in my headset. 

[TetsuNoKobushi]

Going to try one last bump before I give up on it

[TetsuNoKobushi]

They're working now. After my friend brought over his PC, and tested them in his PC, they seemed to work for him. After putting it back in my PC they suddenly worked as well. It should be noted that he used a Titanium HD as well. Nothing else was changed. 

[ShearMe]

This is why I don't want to be a PC tech....