Postby Adam » 17 Jul 2004 09:52
I use an M-Audio Sonica for my Mac OSX Panther, and it has an optical out and analog out. I run the optical output to the optical in of my Soundblaster Audigy on my Windows machine, and for some weird reason, it stopped working.
So I plugged my speakers directly into the Sonica analog out, and it sounded terrible. I really wanted the optical out to work (for ITunes etc.)
It turned out that when VLC was running, even with a video paused, the optical worked, but when I closed VLC, the Sonica optical out stopped working too.
So I reckon that VLC hogs the digital out for Sonica. I have no idea why. But keeping the program running, on pause, allows the win machine to receive audio output. And why the Sonica sounds so bad with analog (it didn't do this before), I have no idea.
All I know is, since I have VLC, I need to keep it open for the Sonica optical out to work correctly.
Weird. As a computer science BS recent graduate, I know this is one of the weirdest bugs I've heard of, and thus probably one of the hardest to solve. But for now, the temporary fix works, and maybe someone else out there will benefit from knowing this.