How to output sound from games/music player etc. over digital?

[kalniel]

I've plugged my Xonar Xense card into my Marantz NR1506 via the optical cable, and all is well and good when I test the spdif sound in playback devices. But I can't get any applications to send sound over optical, I just see the analogue output levels. What am I missing?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I assume you have selected the digital output or line-out in windows as the one of the enabled output devices??

Edit!!

Its what I had to do yesterday when I got a DAC for the PC,which uses an optical input. I enabled the Realtek Digital output in the settings,and it passed the sound fine via the DAC.

Second Edit!!

If you have a sound card,make sure you have enabled the digital output for the soundcard and not the onboard sound!!

[DDY]

You need to select your digital output as the default device; in the playback devices menu, right click your digital audio output and click 'set as default device'.

[kalniel]

Thanks guys. Digital output was already enabled, and setting it to default didn't help, but when I tested the usual 'speakers' output (not the digital) I could just about hear a faint sound, so I whacked up the levels and found it was outputting through digital, just with very low levels compared to analogue or when testing S/PDIF pass through playback. *shrugs*

Not entirely sure it's doing the right thing, but given there's no amplification on the sound card front any more I guess there's no problem to really up the line out 'volume' and the amp is good enough there's no problem there either.

[EndlessWaves]

Depending on the API a program uses you may need to restart it for changing in the default sound device to take effect.

How the sound devices are presented and labelled is down to your sound card drivers, if may be that 'digital' is a combined mini coax S/PDIF and analogue 3.5mm jack and that optical refers to speakers. You may be able to change things about in the Asus control panel.