This applies to the current Saffire Range

First of all make sure you have a DVD, Blu-ray or Video File that contains an audio track in Dolby Digital/ AC-3 format.

- The first step is to go into MixControl, go to settings and switch on 'SPDIF AC3 Mode'
- After you have done this you should find that a new device shows up in your Windows playback devices called; 'Saffire SPDIF/AC3'. If it does not show up then please go back into MixControl, click on File> Save to Hardware and then restart your computer.
- After this, open up VLC Player, go to; Tools> Preferences and go to the Audio tab. In here select the Output Module to 'DirectX audio output', tick the box to 'Use S/PDIF when available' and select the device to be 'Saffire SPDIF /AC3 (2- Saffire Audio).
- If you then open up the media you are going to play in VLC, go to the Audio tab in VLC and make sure the Audio Track playing is the Dolby/ AC-3 format track and the Audio Device is set to 'A/52 over S/PDIF'. 
- This will then mean that VLC player is outputting the audio in AC-3 mode, but to make sure this is going to the S/PDIF output, you need to go back into MixControl and depending on what unit you have, you need to assign the following DAW outputs to the S/PDIF outputs;

Saffire Pro 14 --> DAW 5 and DAW 6
Saffire Pro 24 --> DAW 7 and DAW 8
Saffire Pro 24 DSP --> DAW 7 and DAW 8
Saffire Pro 40 --> DAW 11 and 12
Liquid Saffire 56 --> DAW 11 and 12

Once you have set this up you should find that your decoder device will be able to decode the AC-3 signal via S/PDIF, however if you have any further problems with this please contact our support team.