So, a couple days ago, I purchased an optical cable from Monoprice. Being that I live about 10 miles from them, it only took two days to arrive, and I've been waiting eagerly to finally experience my beloved speakers through the wonder that is digital audio.

Today, my cable arrived and I rushed to plug it in. "No digital data" appeared on the screen of my control pod. After a bit of tinkering with the sound card (SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC ???), I managed to get sound out of the digital input, but only for movies. Music only comes through the analog input.

At first, when The Fountain started, the control pod noodled around a bit and set itself to DD Digital. That's when I realized it was working. Thinking all was better, I switched back to iTunes (watching movies through WMP), but no music came through.

Much to my dismay, upon returning to the film -- I had previously closed WMP --, the surround signal was gone! No longer could I select DD Digital or anything to that effect; only stereo, stereo x2, and Pro-Logic II Movie/Music remained!

So I have a few questions:

1. Are there any hardware issues (Also, running Vista Home Premium, 32-bit)?
2. Software issues (ie, various settings in iTunes/WMP/Control Panel)?

The computer came with no documentation as far as the sound card is concerned.

The main reason I purchased this cable was for music, as I listen to anywhere from 6-12 hours a day, and I was looking for an increase in quality in that regard. I'll be furious if I can't use this cable for music. Movies and games are second most.

Any help would be appreciated.

I've continued tinkering.

I uninstalled Soundblaster Audigy MB and for some reason this also uninstalled the SigmaTel drivers. I reinstalled those after some trouble, and now my situation is a tad different. Now, I ONLY get audio from optical. No analog (even though when in the playback device menu, test tones come through every speaker on both the analog and digital setups), music or movies.

And I still have the same problem as before with movies: no surround.

This damn cable has given me so much trouble it's almost no longer worth the added quality and $5 I spent on it... :mad:

Edit: Alas, a compromise! Surround is now functional for movies and music works just fine through optical... I have no idea why... This is irritatingly bizarre.

Last problem is getting analog to work (for games in 5.1) again. A new battle, a new day. Any help in that regard would be most appreciated.