I had a problem with the C-Media on board sound controller where randomly in windows (starting from logging in to playing music for hours) the computer would freeze: no stop errors, keyboard and mouse locked... Sometimes my harddrive activity light would stay lit while frozen. Once I went into safe mode and unistalled the device then disabled it via the BIOS, then my freezing disappeared. If you use this board and want digital out, then invest a little money in a SB Live! OEM sound card and the digital I/O addon card from here: hxxp://digitalaudio.co.kr/english/shopping/shopping.htm

If anyone has this problem and wants more info of my setup, PM me... :)

Later,
CaP

I tried using the onboard sound for some time but found out that the sound quality of creative Live is much better than the on-board C-media chip. For the time I used the onboard sound, my computer never froze or crashed. Have you tried installing the latest drivers for the C-media chip. Get the drivers from the manufacturers website rather than Soyo.

yes... I tried a bunch of different drivers and still got the same problem. Check out this google groups post:
hxxp://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=c1ea428a.0207121204.6f225555%40posting.g oogle.com&rnum=25&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Ddigital%2Baudio%2Bgroup:alt.comp.peri phs.mainboard.soyo%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26start%3D20%26sa%3DN

it outlines the problem i "was" having pretty well. Anyway, now that I have sound, and I'll have digital shortly, I'm happy. :) I'm probably going to use the digital i/o spacer that came with the motherboard with the SB Live! card, if I can figure out how to connect the two. I found this chart, hxxp://atlas.hemmet.chalmers.se/livecenter/showpage.php?id=10&page=4, so I'm gonna try using that... what do you think?

Hmmm! That sounds interesting. Lemme know how it goes, and if really works. Maybe I will do the same to my SB Live!

deadman, I just bought the SB III from here: hxxp://www.audiencedp.com/sbdb3.htm

check it out... i'm sure it'll work with your SB live as well :)

Later,
CaP

got the SB Live! III a few days ago... digital out has been working great. But I haven't been able to reproduce surround sound yet. :unsure: I tried installing the latest driver from creative's site, but still nothing. I have yet to figure this out, but hopefully it won't take long. ;)

later,
CaP

Thanks for the link Cap!

However I had no need to buy any devices to get digital out. I used the additional I/O card that came with the Soyo KT 333 PE to get digital out with my soundblaster 5.1. The sblive 5.1 already has a 10 pin connection to which you can connect the I/O card and it works like a charm.

well, if anyone else needs an SB Live! III bracket, I have an extra... :) PM or email me...

-CaP