- C-media Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Download For Windows 10 32
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So, like me, you thought you found a good deal on a 5.1 sound card with SPDIF and DDL (Dolby Digital Live) – well think again!
Ok, so I got the C-Media CMI8768 sound card for about £12, and then afterwards realised that it didn’t do Dolby Digital Live, which was a huge thing for me, as I wanted to connect my PC to my AV receiver via SPDIF in order to enjoy harmonious 6.1 surround sound whilst playing games.
It’s worth noting that games of today tend not to output through SPDIF, and stick to the good old fashioned analog outputs only. This means, that even if you have SPDIF connected to your stereo with a million speakers, you will only get a stereo mixdown from your games. The way around this is to get a sound card with DDL, which basically converts analog to digital on the fly, meaning that you can achieve surround sound whilst playing games, by using SPDIF.
Hi, I have a generic sound card pci with the chipset cmi8768. (C-media) I cant find anywhere driver for windows x64. It is not supported in 10? For CMI873x or CMI876x series, C-Media no longer support Win10 driver. For CMI878x, CM88xx, or USB Audio series, please contact your product vendor to get customized Win10 driver. However, if your product didn't apply customized driver when you purchased, you can then just use Win10 in box standard driver. StarTech.com 7.1 Channel Sound Card - PCI Express - 24-bit - 192KHz - 7.1 Sound Channels - Internal - C-Media CM8828 - PCI Express x1 - 92 dB - S/PDIF Out - TAA Compliant $58.99 / each Qty.
Of course I found all this out after I bought the damn card… but hey.
So anyway, after a lot of problems with drivers, I realised that hey, I have the wrong card anyway, my mistake. So I took the plunge and bought the other card, the big brother, the C-Media CMI8768+ (that + basically means, does everything the same as the old version, but includes DDL)
Now the fun begins.
After hours of tweaking the outputs to get SPDIF working ok (which in all fairness, I did get working eventually) I realised that even to hear a nice 6.1 surround sound in media center, I had to go into Media Center, click settings, click DVD, and then Audio, and then open a screen in windows that enabled me to choose SPDIF.
This was not on.
C-media Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Download For Windows 10 32
Luckily the sound card performs better with other programs, but really badly with MCE and VLC, the two programs I use most. When selecting SPDIF out in VLC, all I got was fuzz from the speakers, like a radio with no aerial.
After spending far too much time trying to resolve my problem, and downloading multiple drivers (people have taken to making their own now) and checking forums… it appeared that Cmedia didn’t actually use their message board, or release new drivers, in fact it seemed that although they marketed the card pretty well, they didn’t actually support it at all! (for horrifiying evidence of this, check here: Cmedia support forum)
So, I was now about £30 out of pocket, and connected my amp up with the normal 3.5mm -> RCA jack, when it hit me. I had more outputs! of course… analog outputs… this would enable me to use DDL and give me 6.1 sound all at once! so I headed over to dealextreme.com and bought a few 3.5mm -> RCA jack leads (cost about 80p each inc postage) and hooked them up to my stereo like so (I didn’t use the digital our, mic in, or analog line in, and my card looks different to this one below):
Analog audio connections
My amp (Denon 1507, click the image for full size):
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See those 8 little inputs in the bottom left corner? thats the EXT input (sometimes called 7.1 or 8.1 input) where you can match up the RCA leads from the sound card, to these sockets.
So now I had it… my sound card worked (when it wasn’t actually seated properly into the motherboard…when it was, it wasn’t recognised) – and without the use of SPDIF, freeing up that input on my amp for my 360, or whatever else. I did have a few problems with the card outputting channels in a different order to what was described, but that was quickly solved by just swapping round the outputs into the amp. I do have a bit of a hiss on my front right speaker, but I can’t say that the card is definitley to blame for that, as it is probably a lose lead somewhere.
My advice: If anyone has an old sound card laying around, and a nice AV receiver – try the old sound card and a few RCA leads first, and see what kind of quality you get. Using the analog outputs means you can have DDL, which means you can play games in surround sound (even most newer games do not output to SPDIF with full surround sound yet). This is a cheaper option, and one that worked very well for me.
PS. if you have vista and want a Cmedia sound card – please just avoid them like the plague.
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The plague. nuff said