Hey guys, I am hoping someone here has some experience in capturing audio over toslink that might be able to steer me in the right direction. First a little bit of history over what I'm trying to do and why I'm doing it. I'm a bit of an audiophile nut AND I like rock music, not a good combination right now, I know... Over compressed albums over the last decade absolutely drive me crazy. A glimmer of light here or there has popped up (The new G'nR album for instance), but when it all comes down to it, most of the music I love from the last decade is nearly un-listenable at anything besides a quiet background level due to the over use of compression in todays music. Over the last year or so now, a couple of video games have come out that allow you to play as various members of a band (Singer, Bassist, Guitarist, Drummer). The creators of these games have done a much better job with the mixing and mastering of the music than the original artists labels have. (It's a truly sad era we live in, is it not??) Anyways, for this reason I want to capture as bit perfect of a sample as possible from the optical audio stream coming from my PS3 game system. Over time I have found that there is copy protection in place in that stream that must be disabled in order for my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX sound card to capture the stream. To get around that I sourced a unit that is used professionally as a digital resampler (Behringer SRC 2000) which also happens to remove the copy bit from a digital stream. ($29.99 shipped, great purchase!) It works flawlessly, and I can now record any digital 16 bit stereo source at will using the Behringer unit in line with my sound card. That's great and all, but Creative Labs driver software isn't... For some odd reason the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX driver has a volume control tied to the SPDIF input. To me, this makes no sense whatsoever. It seems to me that the overall benefit of capturing audio via digital input is completely lost when you start messing with the volume and any other attributes BEFORE the audio is captured. I also want to add that Creative Labs was absolutely NO help at all in my endeavor. I put in a quick email request for tech support on how to bypass all processing and volume adjustments in order to capture a bit perfect copy of a digital audio stream, and their response was that of the following: "I am sorry to inform you, that based upon your product's date of purchase, it appears you're beyond the complementary... e-mail (1 year) support period... You can purchase a Creative Tutor session to receive expert help and advice from a Technical Advisor by phone. Each Creative Tutor session is only $12.99 and covers one support issue for up to 30 minutes." I'm absolutely baffled that such a large company as Creative Labs would cut off all support for their products after only a year. That even 1up's the unintelligible printer tech support I've received from HP in the past! Maybe my Audigy 2 NX just isn't capable of capturing a pure digital stream, but I'm putting this post out there in hopes that someone maybe have ran into a similar issue in the past.
Very interesting... I concur the music industry’s most damaging enemy is their own incompetence. They screw up about anything that can be screwed up. Luckily for them, most music sells itself. If they tried to enrich the public by finding new talent in unlikely places, push the envelope for recording technology and try to be fare with pricing and licensing music from the artists, they would be in their golden era. I do not have the expertise to help you. I have never heard of anyone doing what you are doing so I can't help you much. I can say, don't worry about volume in a digital signal. However, sounds to me like the input is analog. You capture analog. However, unlike the music engineers the engineers that built your sound card know more than any member in AD. My advice is, assume they are not morons and go with the flow. Play with the volume and see if it makes a difference. If it is all digital, the only difference will be the loudness setting which is actually in the tag data not in the music data. You might try posting this on the hi-def audio board. This board is mostly concerned with the mundaine aspects of digital audio. However, you can never tell who might read your query. If you really want to 'get into it' try hydogen audio forum. They will be able to help you analyse and compare your music at different volume levels.
