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I have a three year old Dell system and I'm considering upgrading the audio
card in the system. The Dell OEM SB Live! Value card is not very good.
Unless I do a bunch of wierd tweaking and running different Creative audio
card drivers the damned thing won't enable S/PDIF output at all. Pretty
damned useless when you have a speaker system with Dolby Digital decoding.

Lately prices have dropped on some 5.1 capable audio cards. I noticed some
SB Live! 5.1 audio cards at Best Buy priced around $40 or $50. Does anyone
here have any experience with using S/PDIF output on this particular model?
I don't want to buy the thing if its drivers won't allow the freaking S/PDIF
port to be used like the case with my current P.O.S. card. I'm trying to
make my mind up between getting this thing (if it will do what I want it to
do), or spending a bit more money for a basic version of the Audigy2 ZS card
(I don't want the version with the big, funky breakout box --all my 5.25
ports are filled up with DVD-ROM and DVD+/-RW).

Bob