Hello bxlgotham, On the H9000, only one of the following protocols may be active at a time: ADAT, S/PDIF Optical, S/PDIF RCA, AES3 XLR, or AES DB25. This is configured on the front panel’s Clock menu page, or in Emote’s Setup View. It seems you’re trying to use more than one in our setup – RCA and Optical. Is it possible to come out of the Axe with TOSLINK and go out of the H9000 with TOSLINK? That would work.
I think he is using a converter in between the AxeFXIII Spdif and the H9000 to get it to toslink.
H9000, in Emote’s menu, go to Meter Bridge. You can select 8 ins or outs and see signal there but even easier and more importantly……have you set up any FX chains yet? You won’t have signal passing thru the H9000 if you haven’t as you haven’t made any virtual connections yet.