Soundblaster Live! audio card

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trane65

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I think I need a special cable to connect my Soundblaster Live card's audio input with the digital output of my 8 track hard disk recorder. The digital outs on the Roland seem to take RCA cables but the audio ins on the sound card are slightly larger. What cable do I need?
 
The audio ins on a SB Live card (on the card itself) are for analog line level signals.

The SB Live has a connector on the card itself for a digital SP/DIF signal, but the standard card did not come with that connector. The card was also sold in a "Platnum" version which had an external box (which fit into a 5 1/4 drive bay) with the digital connectors.
 
I think I need a special cable to connect my Soundblaster Live card's audio input with the digital output of my 8 track hard disk recorder.
Click to expand...

RWhite was too nice to say it, so I'll spell it out: you might as well try to connect your water supply to the sound card inputs, you'll have as much luck. A digital output is a digital signal -- a bunch of encoded data -- and you have to have something at the other end that can recognize it, decode it, and turn it back into an audible signal that can be amplified and drive speakers. It is not anywhere near equivalent to an analog signal. No cable in the work will work.
 
Can't I just run a RCA cable from the master outs of my hard disk recorder, into a RCA to 1/8" jack, then into the analog ins??
 
trane65 said:
Can't I just run a RCA cable from the master outs of my hard disk recorder, into a RCA to 1/8" jack, then into the analog ins??
Click to expand...
BINGO! That's it! :)
 
If you "Master outs" are sending out an analog signal, which they probably are, then yes that will work.

If they are outputing a digital signal, then no it will not work.
 
SB lives DO have built-in digital interface capability-to some degree. some of them came with daughtercards-if this is the case, then that's what you want-i think the sp/dif inputs used rca by default. if you have this, and it isn't working, i'm not sure what to tell you. i do know that some third party daughercards have been made with rca and digital outputs using difference digital format inputs. if this is confusing, i'd be glad to try and dig up links if possible.
 
hi, trane

I use a SB live and a Roland VS840 recorder and as the other people here said ... you´ll have to use a cable from the RCA MASTER OUT to the LINE IN analog input (the blue colored one) of the SoundBlaster. This works fine for me, though it´s supposed to be some quality loss in this process. (My noise-damaged-ears don´t hear this) :)


If you´re going digital you´d go with the SB platinum or some card like that with digital ins & outs - remember that the SB has digital OUT (the orange one) though

regrets

Juan
 
If you have a Roland 8 track, the digital outputs conform to spdif. The master outs are rca analog.
:cool:
 
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