Somebody else replied to my original as well will post it here too, bottom contains some info from my experiments with hdmi, positional sound, surround sound modes... etc... got everything working... for findings real below.... some interesting discovery made relating to 7 ch stereo/dynamic eq/volume vs true surround sound.

On 11/23/2018 11:38 PM, wrote:
Hello,

Take a look at this picture, it shows pins for audigy and x-fi elite pro soundblasters:

http://pinouts.ru/visual/gen/sb_audigy2_ad_ext.jpg

ascii version in case picture is no longer available:

2 40
....................
....................
1 39

pins seem to be numbered vertically from bottom to top 1, 2, then next column is probably 3 4 and so forth.

Not sure which pins would be important to make a custom cable.

pin 5 spdif 0 in

pin 9 spdif 0 out
pin 27 spdif 3 out
pin 29 spdif 1 out
pin 31 spdif 2 out

Which other pins would be important ?

It mentions these SPDIF output pins. 0,1,2,3

So that's 4 pins.

How many audio channels can travel over 1 pin ?

Also how would these be connected into a cable, should gnd be included or another other pins

What I am trying to figure out if the X-Elite Pro soundblaster is what I currently believe it is:

7.1 Surround Sound Analog outputs
5.1 Surround Sound Digital outputs

However if only 4 spdif pins available then how would it achieve 6 channels for 5.1 surround sound digital ?

I read somewhat 1 spdif connection via normal connectors/cables can carry two audio channels.

"
It can carry two uncompressed audio channels of up to 48kHz and 20/24
bits, depending. It doesn't have to carry uncompressed audio though,
it's just transmission protocol and data link layer standard. A single
SPDIF connection can carry a 5.1 surround audio stream if it's encoded
with something like DTS and compressed 4:1, and connected to something
that knows how to decode it
"

How does it carry two audio channels over this wire ?

What does the wire consists out of ?

Is it literally one wire ?

Or are there two ? A plus and a minus ? Where does there appear to be two metal things involved on the wire a pin and something circular... the circular is maybe ground ?

Does it interleave audio signals over the cable ?

So if there are four spdif pins on the x-fi then why the **** does it not support 7.1 spdif over these cables ?!

Seems like a delibrate design to limit this piece of hardware.

Apperently creative labs doesn't really believe or want to support 7.1 surround sound.

A custom made cable and plug might be able to carry 7.1 to the receiver.

Lot's of these units sold, so perhaps this is an interesting commercial endavouer if somebody can make it work.

Not sure if it's totally worth it.

I did complete my experiments with laptop and pc and receiver and speakers etc.

Got everything working they way I wanted.

Have not experiment with spdif but did experiment with hdmi.

There is a slight sound improvement over hdmi... but probably not worth all the effort.

The main reason why the laptop sounded better was probably the surround sound mode.

It was set to 7 ch stereo, which made it sound really loud... plus perhaps dynamic eq and dynamic volume was on on the receiver.

This probably caused 3d positions sounds which are very weak and normally not hearable suddenly hearable which was very interesting for warcraft frozen throne...

All kinds of sounds were noticeable... which would normally probably be too low volume...

So lot's of audio quality is actually being lost by 3D audio technology in games itself...

Not sure what... maybe footsteps... or special sound effects... kinda weird..

For now I like positional audio best for world of warships so will stick with HDP direct.

Another possibility is multi channel 7.1 which would allow audio processing like dynamic eq/volume but this makes it harder to tell how far enemies truely are... bit degrades the 3d position information a bit... cause of volume adjustments.

Thx for the reply.

Bye,
Skybuck.