help with SPDIF on T61

I bought this cable from monoprice
http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...cs_id=1022902&p_id=1571&seq=1&format=2&style=
but i'm not getting it to work
i thought that with this cable i could put it straight in the headphone jack, and to my receiver. I switched the sound to use SPDIF in vista, and vista claims it's producing sound, but the receiver doesn't see anything.
am i doing something wrong, or is this the fault of my cable ?

also, i just bought a dock, and tried the same thing, and it still doesn't work.
i just barely noticed that on the side of the dock, it has an output that says SPDIF, but none of my cables fit
what kind of cable does this need....coax?

 

bump

I'm interested to find the answer to this as well.

 

Um it says right on the product description that you have to plug it into a mini toslink (optical), which are usually only found on apples, not just a regular headphone jack.

 

Yea, it needs plugged into an optical port. The SPDIF connector you see is most likely coaxial (RCA), use one of those cables instead.

 

i ran a COAX from the dock, and it worked.
however, i had to borrow it just to test. (so i'll have to buy one)
aren't you supposed to be able to use the mini toslink out of the headphone jack? I even bought a cable just for the purpose!!

 

That's what the SPDIF out on the mini dock and the advanced dock are for.

 

To be honest, I've never even heard of this.

 

but on my dock, the output that says SPDIF is a COAX
they're different things
I thought SPDIF is toslink optical,

 

SPDIF can be outputted either via toslink or coaxial.

 

but isn't the headphone out port SPDIF?
that's why i bought the mini toslink cable.
it fits perfectly, so i think i have the right cable, i just don't get any sound

 

No no no. Headphone out is two channel analog output. Toslink is an optical connection, not a metal-contact one like headphones use. You do not have the right cable, and you're not getting any sound because there's no optical output in the headphone port.

 

but i thought that it doubled at both
that's why some headphone outputs have "SPDIF" written right below them

 

Really? I stand corrected, I did not know this.

 

There are some line out jacks that do both toslink and standard metal to metal analog, but AFAIK, the T61 doesn't.

 

hmm, wait a minute..
I thought headphone jack is 3.5mm and SPDIF is larger?

 

No, there are 3.5mm optical jacks. I had a minidisc player with one once.

 

oh, ok.

 

yes there are 3.5mm optical jacks, some turtle beach sound cards offer this ability. in your case you will need to make sure you get a decent quality 75 OHM cable for the purpose.