Realtek ALC883 - S/PDIF problem

I have evga motherboard with built in Realtek HD audio (ALC883).

Board features 2 ports for digital audio (optical and coaxial). and according to manual both are output. However when installed vista drivers one of the ports has been chosen as digital output (optical) and another as digital input (coax) (i can see that when i hover the mouse over the jacks in "Realtek HD audio manager")

Is there any way to make the coaxial port as an output port instead of optical?
My my HT reciver has no free optical ports so i have to use coax to get some sound from the computer.

have you actually plugged in the coaxial cable from your EVGA mobo (output) to your AMP/receiver (input), then go to your Realtek's audio manager and you will see it uses it automatically...worse case, just tweak with it, till you hear something from your AMP, which also brings up the ??, make sure you change your settings in your AMP also..example: Digital input would be(in my case) CD input digital coaxial input number 1.2.3 if applicable.
Hope this helps.

Yes the coax is there, and my reviver is set to correct input (DVD - coax). It actually worked when i have used sb-xfi with io panel from my other computer. But no luck with this machine.

Everything looks same as on your screen with one exeption, my optical jack is under output tab and coax under input tab. There is no way to change it trough realtek panel.

Any ideas?
Are there any official realtek support forums? Their website looks cheap with very limited faq and support.

Sorry for the late response...have you figured out any solution yet?
Yeah, I was just gonna say that..lol...and how slow their site loads up...wow
I only go there to download updated audio drivers, which in this case 1.91.

Nope no luck

I have tried 3 different versions of drivers.
I'm considering buying an Optical to Coax adapter if i don't get it solved


Run a Free scan to check your PC for outdated drivers

i have the P5N-D mobo ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
and am connecting to my sony digital amp via spdif over coax, with xp i got 5.1 sound now with vista x64 ultimate sp1 can only get 2 channel digital to amp.

have been searching for many days to try find fix, but with no luck.

any help would be great

I had a whole reply typed out but it seems to have disappeared, strange, anyways I'll try and recall what I said. To get 5.1 sound over spdif (Dolby Digital / DTS) you need to enable exclusive mode on your sound card. Outputting 5.1 sound requires exclusive access for the application outputting the sound. Any other application that tries to produce sound while another application is in exlcusive mode will be denied. 5.1 audio cannot be mixed, it 1 stream only. So to get 5.1 sound you will need something like ac3filter to do the passthrough. PCM audio is 2 channel and can be mixed which is why you only see the stereo option in control panel from your screen shot. Also when you use spdif passthrough (5.1) you will not be able to control the volume through your PC, the receiver will have to do that.

If the content you are playing is only 2 channel you are better off setting your receiver to virtual surround (every receiver calls it something different) and have it simulate 5.1

Ok perhaps i need to explain a little bit more than i did in my last post, soz i was tired, and had been searching the net for some time, im from south africa by the way down in the the mother city of cape town :D.

first of all lets get a few items out of the way so that we are all on the same page.

i have the following Sony Digital amp
Sony 6.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver - STRDE598

i have this Mobo
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

and unfortunately dont have a 5 meter optical cable so im forced to use my coax via my spdif port on my mobo, now to my understanding that whether it be through my coax or my optical port, the sound should still be transmitted as a digital signal that my sony digital amp will decode, which has this blue light that comes on when its recieving a 5.1 digital signal whether its from the dvd player or or from my pc.

before i had xp running and this worked fine, sound was great, had the hole 5.1 thing going nicely, and you can ask my wife lols she rips me off about it sometimes, im pedantically anal retentive when it comes to my sound, it has to be perfect if you know what i mean.:D

what ive done is uninstalled all codecs (as i was trying many different things) and uninstall ed all sound drivers, O and its a band new vista x64 ultimate installation as well, so no other funnies lurking in the background .

check DD test pic

when i go to the Realtek digital output properties -> supported formats page and test the dolby digital signal, it works great even at 96.0Khz as my amp supports this, even get the blue light on the sony amp to say its receiving a Dolby digital signal over the coax and i get sound test through all my speakers. thus my conclusion is that its not a hardware fault (i.e. realtek sound processor encoding/decoding/rapping/padding bla bla bla, realy dont feel like getting technical right now, but if your really interested check this site out)

How SPDIF output works.

How sound cards handle SPDIF

AC3Filter :: View topic - SPDIF and AC3Filter

but basically in a nut shell -> Compressed data may be transmitted over SPDIF instead of PCM data at a bit rate that your digital receiver can handle, most recievers can only handle 48.0Khz, im lucky myne can do 96.0Khz and belive it or not you can actually hear a difference, but then again ive got some really nice speakers that can handle a huge sound range. even got the dogs around the whole neighborhood barking their heads of, couldnt belive it. off topic anyways.

so basically what im trying to say is that this must be a software issue and there must be a solution to it, as from what ive seen while doing reasearch on the net is that this has been a problem since vista was released as most posts that ive found goese way back to 2005.

all i want is for vista to allow me to set my SPDIF to 5.1 channel instead of 2 channel

as can be seen by 2 channel only pic.
O by the way Exclusive mode has been checked as can be seen in screen shot.

im going to carry on searching for a fix, and eventually ill come right, im not going to go back to XP just for the sound issue, im enjoying COD4 with DX10 and when i figure it out, ill post here how to fix it, but if someone already has a fix, or knows of how to get Vista to output 5.1 sound properly, please let us all know.

thanks a mill guys

L8TR.

.:O:.

i solved my problem, and it was staring me right in the face:eek:.

after spending many many hours trying to find a solution to this problem, and searching every blog and tech forum i could, i eventually did the following.

uninstalled all sound drivers, and codecs, then booted machine in safe mode and used a driver removal software to check that all drivers were infact gone (software found a few items still remaining in registry and system folders) rebooted machine, and installed R1.95 drivers. pretty basic so far.

i then installed ac3 filter AC3Filter and settup so that ac3 uses spdif pass through.
installed media player classic x64 version
(for some reason when i use vlc and setup to use spdif sound is laggy, jumpy, echoee, or plays ok for a few seconds the gap then plays for a few seconds then gap) [rather annoying]

then went back to digital properties and adjusted my output to 24bit 48Hz

and vola problem solved for me.

i think that because i was trying to use 24bit 96Hz output my amp would only see this as stereo.

so basically check your output sample rate and see if your amp/ digital reciever can infact decode the sample rate you have it set your sound card to output.

hope this helps somebody else.

Guys,I am very glad I found this forum.I have a similar problem with my Realtek ACL 883.Mine came integrated in an MSI mother.There are six sound ports behind and two in front.Everything was fine until I installed vista HOme Premium.The sound is choppy and can not hear a word but you can hear something from the speakers though.When I check the sound manager it detects that I have installed or using digital audio.All I want is to be able to use the 7.1 or 8.1 channel sound.I have uninstalled the drivers that came with vista and installed my own.I suspect because it HD sound and I am really sick and tired.I found a solution to that though by driving my car over the mobo but I do not have the money to buy a new mobo so I have to find a solution.I love HD sound so really I dont know if my next sound card that I buy will be better off or will have the same prob.I see an SPDIF jumper on the board and have tried shortening but no luck.I Guess I need digital pins to hook to the sound ports but I have no idea whether or not does exist.I mean a digital pin that I can replace the old analogue ones with.I have no sony or any sort of amplifier that I intend using.I reall need a very simple solution like when I had xp and all the channels worked fine.Like I tried saying I have deleted the vista drivers and installed drivers from realtek website and also from Msi website.Why in God's name can pc companies not provide simple and clearcut solution for problems they know exist.I have labelled my board Vista capable but the onboard Vga which is chrome 9 or some funny VGA does not work well.I have however replaced that with Nvidia 7series but I need this sound to work...pls hit me up or post a reply here .I will appreciate any help.

need more info about your problem mate, like what app's your trying to use to play vid's/music, have you installed any codecs, are you using 32bit/64bit OS, how have you got your speakers settup, are you using digital output, have you got separate amp per channel, bla bla bla. etc........ im sure you get the picture.

Hi there!

I know this thread is rather old, but it helped me solving this exactly same problem described on the previous posts.

I am using Vista Ultimate 32bit, Gom Player, AC3Filter and my onboard sound is Realtek ALC883. I am using a Sony Amp DAV-S500 (also a S/PDIF>Optical converter because this amp only have this option for digital sound input).

Solution for my problem: I checked both options on Sound > Digital Output Properties > Advanced (see attached screenshot) and my sound is now 5.1 through S/PDIF.

Thanks all for your help.

opiuz said:

Ok perhaps i need to explain a little bit more than i did in my last post, soz i was tired, and had been searching the net for some time, im from south africa by the way down in the the mother city of cape town :D.

first of all lets get a few items out of the way so that we are all on the same page.

i have the following Sony Digital amp
Sony 6.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver - STRDE598

i have this Mobo
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

and unfortunately dont have a 5 meter optical cable so im forced to use my coax via my spdif port on my mobo, now to my understanding that whether it be through my coax or my optical port, the sound should still be transmitted as a digital signal that my sony digital amp will decode, which has this blue light that comes on when its recieving a 5.1 digital signal whether its from the dvd player or or from my pc.

before i had xp running and this worked fine, sound was great, had the hole 5.1 thing going nicely, and you can ask my wife lols she rips me off about it sometimes, im pedantically anal retentive when it comes to my sound, it has to be perfect if you know what i mean.:D

what ive done is uninstalled all codecs (as i was trying many different things) and uninstall ed all sound drivers, O and its a band new vista x64 ultimate installation as well, so no other funnies lurking in the background .

check DD test pic

when i go to the Realtek digital output properties -> supported formats page and test the dolby digital signal, it works great even at 96.0Khz as my amp supports this, even get the blue light on the sony amp to say its receiving a Dolby digital signal over the coax and i get sound test through all my speakers. thus my conclusion is that its not a hardware fault (i.e. realtek sound processor encoding/decoding/rapping/padding bla bla bla, realy dont feel like getting technical right now, but if your really interested check this site out)

How SPDIF output works.

How sound cards handle SPDIF

AC3Filter :: View topic - SPDIF and AC3Filter

but basically in a nut shell -> Compressed data may be transmitted over SPDIF instead of PCM data at a bit rate that your digital receiver can handle, most recievers can only handle 48.0Khz, im lucky myne can do 96.0Khz and belive it or not you can actually hear a difference, but then again ive got some really nice speakers that can handle a huge sound range. even got the dogs around the whole neighborhood barking their heads of, couldnt belive it. off topic anyways.

so basically what im trying to say is that this must be a software issue and there must be a solution to it, as from what ive seen while doing reasearch on the net is that this has been a problem since vista was released as most posts that ive found goese way back to 2005.

all i want is for vista to allow me to set my SPDIF to 5.1 channel instead of 2 channel

as can be seen by 2 channel only pic.
O by the way Exclusive mode has been checked as can be seen in screen shot.

im going to carry on searching for a fix, and eventually ill come right, im not going to go back to XP just for the sound issue, im enjoying COD4 with DX10 and when i figure it out, ill post here how to fix it, but if someone already has a fix, or knows of how to get Vista to output 5.1 sound properly, please let us all know.

thanks a mill guys

L8TR.

.:O:.

Click to expand...

OMFG Thank you! I searched for the last couple of hours to figure out why I couldn't get surround output out of my spdif and it's the 48Khz, 96Khz settings that screwed it up. It worked fine when I had a movie using the ac3 codec, but regular mp3 files on winamp only came out in 2 channels and my subwoofer didn't work.
For some reason the realtek drivers default (or maybe I stupidly set it at) 192khz and my receiver basically choked on it and only put out stereo pcm. Well as soon as I set it to 48khz (or 96, my receiver is decent too and can handle this as well) everything worked as it should.

Thanks again. Now I don't have to deal with my mobo's support line and non-english native speaking tech support people.

opiuz said:

i solved my problem, and it was staring me right in the face:eek:.

after spending many many hours trying to find a solution to this problem, and searching every blog and tech forum i could, i eventually did the following.

uninstalled all sound drivers, and codecs, then booted machine in safe mode and used a driver removal software to check that all drivers were infact gone (software found a few items still remaining in registry and system folders) rebooted machine, and installed R1.95 drivers. pretty basic so far.

i then installed ac3 filter AC3Filter and settup so that ac3 uses spdif pass through.
installed media player classic x64 version
(for some reason when i use vlc and setup to use spdif sound is laggy, jumpy, echoee, or plays ok for a few seconds the gap then plays for a few seconds then gap) [rather annoying]

then went back to digital properties and adjusted my output to 24bit 48Hz

and vola problem solved for me.

i think that because i was trying to use 24bit 96Hz output my amp would only see this as stereo.

so basically check your output sample rate and see if your amp/ digital reciever can infact decode the sample rate you have it set your sound card to output.

hope this helps somebody else.

Click to expand...

I got the same problem its making me crazy how did you set youre ac3 filter to bypass to digital 5.1 and what kind of player do you use?
I play my mp3 with madiaplayer and normaly use the k-lite codec. I have the sound on my MSI P965 Platinium also with the same front thing i´ve got windows 7 64 bit installed can you please help me