USB Audio Card / Optical

Since I'm stuck at home being ill a lot of the time lately I decided to go ahead and put some funds into a new headset for gaming mostly. I love my music and movies though and tend to need a wireless headset so I can work on projects w/o wires in the way.

I had looked into the 7.1 gaming headsets (which I know is virtual surround) and picked up the Astro A40 TR's with the MixAmp and a pair of SteelSeries 800's to give them a whirl. I didn't care much for the sound on the Astro's, the SteelSeries I like a lot better overall. I guess I didn't read the fine print enough and found out the SSeries need to be plugged into an optical port to appropriately use the 7.1 surround.

Frustrated, I looked external sound cards up. I have a SB Recon 3Di in my AW17m3 (2015, as seen below in my sig) but it's not capable of 7.1 nor does it have an optical. I purchased a Sound BlasterX G5. I figured because it has an optical out that I could connect the wireless SSeries amp/transmitter into it and therefore, it would be optical.

I'm using the mini TOSlink provided with the G5; so I have it plugged into the G5's Optical Out and going into the Optical In of the Siberia 800's transmitter unit. Sound is fine, mic is working fine. Little red light is beaming out of the.. well, out, lol.

Now I see the SPDIF-In listed in Recording Devices.. so I figured there would be a SPDIF-Out. Under Playback Devices it shows the G5 and the device as Speakers, utilizing a rear 3.5mm jack. Since there is a SPDIF-In, wouldn't there be a SPDIF-Out?

I am no audiophile. I realize it's tricking my ears and whatnot and I'm okay with that... I'm not bad with computers but I've tried looking it up for days and different installs, re-installs of the software and drivers.., etc. I want to make sure that SPDIF-Out isn't something I am missing. There is no sign of it in Device Manager, PlayBack Devices, etc. I never did a full clean install on this system when I got it. Just in case I screwed something up I did driver cleaning and all that jazz. As for the Recon3Di I left it installed (and have removed it as well to see if it helped) mainly for my 2 speaker setup but to no avail.

If it turns out that SPDIF-out isn't supposed to be there I will laugh at myself, but for now I'd really like to understand why it isn't and if someone could explain it to me, I'd be very grateful.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

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USB Audio Card / Optical