Stupid Question on soundcard inputs

[sondriven]

I just sold my Akai DPS16 and had a M-Audio 2448 Soundcard in my computer. I had them hooked via S/PDIF for digital clarity.

Now that the Akai is gone I will be recording to the computer for some scratch demos and stuff.

My dumb question:

The M-Audio card has only these jacks:

2 Coaxial S/PDIF I/O
2 Digital S/PDIF I/O
2 Analog I/O

Can I use the S/PDIF Coaxial Inputs like regular RCA analog inputs?

What Ill be doing is:

My gear > Keyboards/guitars >mixer >to the input of computer.

Thanks

john

 

[drstawl]

I've heard of some bizarre soundcard using the same physical jack to transmit S/PDIF and analog outputs with a SW switch to select which signal is being sent but I've never seen that myself.

If you mean, can you use the digital outputs just like the analog outputs for different devices that accept these different outputs in the same way as far as the rest of your system, then the answer is YES. They work in very similar fashion, although some devices have no way to adjust the input sensitivity to the amplitude of the digital input signal and some do. That shortfall is much rarer in the analog domain.

 

[j]

Can I use the S/PDIF Coaxial Inputs like regular RCA analog inputs?

no