Passing optical data through?

[FirstBorg]

Hi!

I got a question regarding the passthrough of Spdif Signals coming throug optical cables.
My PC has an optical input and output.
If I connect a satellite reciever to the input, and the dolby decoder to the output, is it possible to let windows just pass the signal through without processing it?
If this works, can I still output Spdif signals generated by the computer (not the one from the input)?
thx.

[Skelsgard]

It depends mostly on your soundboard (or onboard audio?), regarding its characteristics (whether it allows to output all the inputs [whatever is send to the soundboard] thru SPDIF), and in a smaller part on the software used to render audio (if it can send signals thru the SPDIF output).
Cheers.

[FirstBorg]

Hi!

I tried it out, and it does work. My Realtek HD Audio chip can simply pass things through.
But I can either pass things through, or output generated signals, not both together... so now Im searching for keyboard shortcut to en/dis-able passthrough, because on the targeted machine, I got no mouse to do this.

[Skelsgard]

So, I´m understanding that your digital output is not always active but by active selection?

[FirstBorg]

Not exactly.
I have two options:
Passthrough and digital output.

If I select digital output, everything goes out through the spdif. AC3 streams from movies, or music.. everything.
If I select passthrough, only the inputstream is passed through to the output, not the streams created by the system. So at this option, Ac3 etc. is not available at the spdif output.
I hope you understand what I mean.

[Skelsgard]

Yeah, is very clear now.
From what you say, basically the option that suits your needs is the "Passthrough" one. The stream will cross your system untouched.
Also, "Passthrough" will guarantee that the stream, as untouched, doesn´t get "dirty" with sounds from your computer (any type of system sound, poor software decoding, etc) and the pointless, stream degrading recoding (as the system would have to decode the AC3 to play it and then recode it back to AC3 to send it as 6-ch to the external dolby decoder).

Cheers.