PCA Forums

I noticed that they are offering a Xi-Fi Fatal1ty Pro soundcard for only $80 bucks (after $50 rebate). This seems like a great deal and all but is it worth it to wait and get the regular package with the drive bay and remote? What's the advantage of having the drive bay and remote exactly? I have thought about connecting my tv/xbox/wii to my z-5500 speakers so I'm wondering if I'd need the extras to make this possible. Thanks!

http://www.buy.com/prod/creative-sound- ... 38677.html

ps the rebate says "Offer valid from 2/25/2008 to 3/2/2008". This is a tad confusing. I can still use it today right?

you don't need the drive bay to hook up your speakers. but the remote might come in handy if your watching movies and don't want to get up to adjust the sound.

yeah i know. i also already have a remote that came with my z-5500s. im just wondering on the value of having the drive bay as opposed to just the card itself.

Unless you're doing video or audio editing which involves connecting and disconnecting the inputs a lot, there's no big benefit to the drive bay.

Well the thing is my speakers have SPDIF and Optical connectors on the back, and these are needed for DTS sound since DTS won't work with Direct (3x 3.5mm cables). The xi-fi card has this damn weird flexijack thing that's spec'd as:

Line In / Microphone In / Digital Out (shared 3.5mm mini-jack "FlexiJack")

So what is confusing the sh*t out of me is how I am supposed to connect a 3.5mm minijack cable audio out of my soundcard with either a SPDIF or Optical connector to the back of my speakers.

I'm so confused. Please help.

I remember reading about that once. The SPDIF is not located on the card so either you have it on the drive bay or else on cheaper models you get one of those card brackets that have it and some extra jacks mounted on it.

I just looked at the same card on NewEgg's site where they have better photos. There's a SPDIF extension connector on the card that gets connected to either a card bracket or the drive bay, but the model you're looking at doesn't come with either the drive bay or the bracket so it looks like you really can't use SPDIF on it.

Whatever the Flex Jack is it's not an optical connection.

FlyingPenguin wrote:
Whatever the Flex Jack is it's not an optical connection.

The Flex Jack is a multi-use jack for headphones, mic-in, and line-in. Creative was too lazy to put seperate jacks for them. It's one of the reasons I opted for the Auzen X-Fi prelude 7.1. It's the same chip as the creative but on a much better built card.

I think you need the Digital I/O Module to connect to the digital input of your receiver. Trouble is, you end up using your flexjack microphone input for it.
http://us.creative.com/products/product ... oduct=1780

DTS works on my Logitech X-530 without using the digital connection, so I'm sure it will work on your Z-5500. I'm just using the 3 standard output jacks on the sound card. The trick was enabling the DTS codec in PowerDVD.

Just wondering if you got DTS working with your speakers with the 3x 3.5mm cables pseizure? It turns out Media Player Classic supports DTS.
You can get it free here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Med ... lassic.htm
You can tell if it's working if you select DTS on your DVD menu and you hear sound. You can confirm it is playing DTS by selecting information in the View menu, or in the Audio Language Menu.