Ok, so having acquired an 1/8"-to-RCA, it turns out that yes, the SB0410 will provide S/PDIF out. However, it has the same problem that the CMI8738 had, which is, I can't play two sounds at once.

This may be related to the fact that the only XMMS setting that will produce audio is the OSS driver; all other options produce "please check your sound card settings."

Even when XMMS is not running, Flash applets still can't make noise.

I can't believe I even have to think about this shit. What year is it again?

Man, this shit should not be so hard.

The cheap SoundBlaster that everyone in the world stocks seems to be the SB0410, but the SB0100 is the one that has an RCA jack on it for coaxial S/PDIF. I ordered one of those online, and of course the fuckers shipped me the SB0410 instead, which has only 1/8" phono jacks.

But, the blue plug is labelled "[line-in-icon] [mic-icon] or digital_io". Does that mean that it will work as S/PDIF output if I stuff an 1/8" mono-to-RCA adapter in there? I can't RTFM because the only manual is on a CD in "Windows Help format" (on which "strings" does not work.)