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I have a E-MU 0404 PCI sound card with Samsung HW-F450 sound bar.

When I use the 3.5mm cable, I can increase/decrease/mute sound using my keyboard (or simply the sound controller of Windows 8.1). Today, I have bought an optical cable and plugged it in. Now, the only way to control sound is the remote controller of the sound bar.

Is there a setting that lets me increase/decrease/mute audio when using optical cable? Because there is a lot of difference in sound and I don't want to lose it.

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  • Right click on the speaker icon in the taskbar and select playback devices. See if there is a separate option for the optical fiber device. If so, make it the default. That's about the only thing I can think of.
    – BillDOe
    Commented May 2, 2015 at 22:49

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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+25

Volume control in Windows is the same regardless of the cable used for your speakers, since it is the sound card that is being controlled here through the operating system.

You need to make sure that the sound card with the optical output is selected as the default playback device (right click the volume icon and go to Playback devices to get there). Make sure that none of the other programs are still using the card with the 3.5mm output (just restart them if you can't hear anything).

Once you have done that, you should be able to control the optical output volume regularly.

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  • My sound card (E-MU) is selected as the default device as seen here.
    – padawan
    Commented May 3, 2015 at 16:09
  • @cagirici Select your card and go to Properties and tell me the jack information and all the volume bars that you see.
    – oldmud0
    Commented May 3, 2015 at 18:03
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    Also ensure that disabled devices are shown, as well as disconnected devices. (Right-click in the device selection pane)
    – EKW
    Commented May 8, 2015 at 14:01
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You should check out Volumouse. I think it's just what you need. It has a small resource footprint also. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.html

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If you have a connection with a 3.5mm cable, the signal is converted from digital to analog by the DAC of your sound card and then carried to your sound bar.

If you have a connection with an optical cable, you carry the digital signal to the sound bar and the sound bars DAC handles the conversion. The better quality probably comes from lesser losses on the way the signal has to go analogly and from a better DAC in the sound bar itself.

This is why you can't change the volume in Windows: The system does not change the digital signal at all, it just transfers it to the sound bar.

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