it turns out the optical cable also comes with its own little surprise

while delivering tremendous performance, sound from the pc netflix app does not work

This is turning into a pain in the back side apparently, don't have experience with SPDIF, never felt the need for it, and HDMI and DP worked right off the bat for me even with my weird setup.

At least this is a chance to try out a better quality aux cable. The new worst case scenario is to connect the soundbar with 2 different cables setting me back 40 euro's. My wallet hates me! Thank you though for the provided support

It might be, never happend to me tho even with long self-made cables, I've had my PC crappy motherboard's integrated audio connected to my previous amplifier via AUX for years back in the 90s and I haven't experienced such problems.

Maybe your cable got damaged along the years, unless you keep stomping on it and the copper wires get frayed, the solderings and/or the bits of cable near them are the usual suspects.

You could try to hook up headphones to your AUX and see if the they sound good, at the very least you should be able to have some kind of confirmation.

Sounds more like a software issue here, if the whole setup works fine otherwise. I'd use my search engine of choice to see if anyone's found a solution to this particular problem and keep it in place if I find a fix or workaround.

Not sure if I'd go down this way, but a high quality shielded aux cable is good to have around anyway, especially for use with non-digital equipment.

In any case, most of what you find out there in terms of cabling, save for the really cheap stuff, has some form of shielding and grounding via the audio jacks, which is why most people don't have these sort of issues. But it's enough for some part of the cable to get kinks and break loose of the shielding or the grounding to be disrupted mechanically in order to catch static along the way.

Sound advice it seems , 2 bad you won't participate in my birthday give away, i would reckon that you would have had a solid chance ;)

FTFY :P.

Thanks :). I'll drop by for sure, but won't participate. Incidentally, my own birthday is coming up as well.

well, it seems my brain works slow today but ... it works

one side of the optical cable comes equipped with a 3,5 mm converter, so i can either try and use the aux connection on the soundcard or.. on the soundbar

lets see what happens ;-p

Minor update

updating the firmware of the soundbar!!! resolved almost all of the problems where the music did not display in a correct manner

also, found meself several articles about netflix and a soundbar... like really ?!?!

I use the optical output of an internal soundcard (Soundblaster Audigy RX) to a surround reciever, which is setup with 7.1 speakers (150W/channel in living room).

Onboard optical would have sufficed but it only supports 5.1 setups.
The reason I use optical and not HDMI is beause its an older reciever that only supports up to 1080p while my screen is 4k.

Well, a small update might be in its place.

After numerous on holding issue's with the sound decided on contacting the creative help service. After listening to my concerns they send a custom hardware update. This turned the once faulty audio from hell into a little angle that urinates softly into my ear \o/

Problems fixed, still using the optic cable though, even if this only means 2 channel sound at max 24bit, 96 kHz output, which actually most of the time is quite all right.

Shoutout to those guys from Sound blaster

This does not have to be completely true, considering Class D Amplifier (low pass filter at the does not change principle). It seems to me, that so far nobody mention, that important is what you really hear... some people can distinguish between MP3 320 kbps and lossless FLAC, some not between 128 kbps MP3 and FLAC. So it is good to make some personal listening tests first.

Secondly if you would hear well enough, than you must consider quality of your recordings, complete audio path and maybe if you would "hear as a bat", than even ASIO driver with audio player which supports it (but it comes with a price!!!).

On the other hand there are some "audiophile" accessory, which is expensive, but does not have any impact on sound quality as special oxygen free cables etc. With audio it is as with anything else, if you are interested you would have to study and test it yourself to get best experience.

Well, yes, there are of course ways to digitally amplify a signal, but the output from the low pass filter is still an analogue waveform that has to get to your speakers, which is the point I was trying to make. There are no "digital speakers" out there.

I use speaker for lack of a better word, but I mean the actual physical sound drivers in this case (tweeters, mid-range drivers, woofers/subwoofers etc). A soundbar or a speaker system is, of course, much more than that. Most pack their own firmware and "smart" circuitry as you've mentioned. Only the physical drivers themselves need an analogue input, since they are in essence analog devices and sound is also an analogue waveform (unless we're all living in a simulation :P).