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features Hoontech Digital I/O Card Written by Clarence Song MIDI Connections Due to the shortage of space, the MIDI In and Out are now miniplug sockets instead of the Mini-DIN sockets found in the original I/O card from Creative. You will need to purchase special cables from Hoontech at US$10 per cable, to connect your MIDI equipment to this card. It is also possible to purchase a MIDI joystick port adaptor and use the MIDI In/Out from there instead of this more costly option. Note that MIDI In/Out on the I/O card is not available for the SBLive! Value because Creative omitted the pins from the Value's card design. S/PDIF Input It was most probably the lack of space, which forced Hoontech to shrink the S/PDIF input. You will need this cable to connect to a standard S/PDIF jack. This cable may work for converting the older Sound Blaster AWE32 S/PDIF pin outputs on the card to coaxial. If you managed to get this to work, please inform us! Update! (13 August 1999) Mehmet Emin informs us that the above cable works, but there's a catch: Well, this is possible but AWE series only output MIDI via S/PDIF out. I tested it with a AWE 64 VALUE (I soldered two pins to the two holes marked as S/PDIF on the board) and the S/PDIF out did only output midi, because it's only connected to EMU chip. Optical Digital Output In between the two yellow coaxial sockets, you'll see the familiar square socket. Just plug your optical cables here! This output taps the front channels of the SBLive!. Power Passthrough There is a DC power socket just below the S/PDIF In which is connects to the SoundTrack Digital Amp. It taps the power from the casing's power supply, which connects to the standard DC socket on the upper right corner of the card (just below the blue QC sticker). The SoundTrack Digital Amp is connected to the DC socket on the back panel of the card (middle-left, circled in white). This eliminates the need to purchase a separate adaptor for the Digital Amp. S/PDIF Outputs The two gold plated yellow sockets are the standard coaxial digital outputs, like the ones found on the original Digital I/O card. The original card has one digital output, which taps the front channels. Hoontech's card provides another output, labelled S/PDIF Out 2 which taps the rear channels of the SBLive!. The front and rear S/PDIF outputs connect directly to the SoundTrack Digital Amp, which is able to decode four channels of sound - two for the front, and two for the back. Design As you can see now, the design of the card was partially influenced by the need to connect to the digital amp, this leaving out an optical input which some people might need, as well as having to shrink the S/PDIF In to a 2 pin connector, requiring an external adaptor cable. The MIDI connectors were also shrunk to miniplugs, requiring proprietary cables. And not forgetting ...

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