5.1 surround sound issues in WMC 7

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andrewjs18

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5.1 surround sound issues in WMC 7

#1

Post by andrewjs18 » Thu May 16, 2019 7:56 am

hi all,

I've had my HTPC set up for a long time now, probably a good 10 years or so. About 5 years ago or so, I added an AVR and a 5.1 energy surround sound. I've never been able to get the 5.1 to work correctly with my HTPC so it's mostly gone unused over the years. tonight, my tv speakers started to go in and out and will stop working entirely for long periods of time...so on the surround sound went just so I can listen to my TV...

current set up:

windows 7 WMC
i3 550 cpu
ASUS P7H55-M PRO motherboard
ceton infinitv 4 tv tuner

the motherboard has 1 hdmi & 1 s/pdif port. I have the hdmi port running to my TV and then the s/pdif port running to the AVR. I then have an hdmi cable running from the AVR to my TV so I can see what I'm doing to adjust the settings and what not on the AVR. if I run the sound test directly on the AVR itself, I can hear sound through all 5 speakers. Likewise if I go into the realtek digital output properties and do a test on the supported formats of DTS Audio & Dolby Digital. when I go into the WMC settings to set up the speakers, I change it to 5.1, then set it to runs its tests. all of the test sounds run through the front speakers, nothing out of the L & R surround speakers.

any ideas? I'm not sure what's going on!

dmagerl

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#2

Post by dmagerl » Thu May 16, 2019 4:27 pm

Make sure you dont have the "auto-volume" option set under the TV/Audio menu.

jachin99

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#3

Post by jachin99 » Thu May 16, 2019 5:48 pm

It sounds like a setting in the realtek control center needs to be changed. Can you post a screenshot of the realtek settings? Why not just stream the audio from WMC to the AVR? What options are you given for the default audio device under win 7 sound options? Have you changed any of those?

andrewjs18

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#4

Post by andrewjs18 » Thu May 16, 2019 9:09 pm

dmagerl wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 4:27 pm Make sure you dont have the "auto-volume" option set under the TV/Audio menu.
It was checked, so I unchecked it and saved it. I'm at work currently so can't test at the moment. I remoted into the HTPC via teamviewer. Here's how the page looks now:

Image

andrewjs18

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#5

Post by andrewjs18 » Thu May 16, 2019 9:14 pm

jachin99 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 5:48 pm It sounds like a setting in the realtek control center needs to be changed. Can you post a screenshot of the realtek settings? Why not just stream the audio from WMC to the AVR? What options are you given for the default audio device under win 7 sound options? Have you changed any of those?
it's possible, but I haven't been able to track down an exact setting...yet.

here's the realtek settings page for the optical cable:

Image

and then the advanced settings for the same optical cable:

Image

what do you mean by 'just stream the audio from the WMC to the AVR?

andrewjs18

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#6

Post by andrewjs18 » Thu May 16, 2019 10:54 pm

here's some more photos of the sound properties for that optical connection:

https://imgur.com/a/zOh4vE6

jachin99

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#7

Post by jachin99 » Thu May 16, 2019 11:47 pm

There are a few options you could try changing. Try toggling intermediate mode and Try setting default output to 5 channel. Can you show me a screenshot of playback devices in windows? Why not just unplug the optical out and run audio straight to the avr via HDMI? I have an old Asus xo a card connected via optical and I get multichannel surround. I can toggle settings in the sound cards settings application and if I do this Incorrectly I only get stereo

andrewjs18

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#8

Post by andrewjs18 » Thu May 16, 2019 11:59 pm

jachin99 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 11:47 pm There are a few options you could try changing. Try toggling intermediate mode and Try setting default output to 5 channel. Can you show me a screenshot of playback devices in windows? Why not just unplug the optical out and run audio straight to the avr via HDMI? I have an old Asus xo a card connected via optical and I get multichannel surround. I can toggle settings in the sound cards settings application and if I do this Incorrectly I only get stereo
How would I run audio straight through from my HTPC to my AVR without using the s/pdif optical cable? my HTPC motherboard only has 1 HDMI port, which is currently hooked up to my TV so I can watch live & recorded TV shows from the HTPC.

here's a screenshot of my playback devices:

Image

dmagerl

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#9

Post by dmagerl » Fri May 17, 2019 12:31 am

The auto-volume setting should fix things. When set WMC converts everything to stereo.

If WMC is set to 5 channel, you cannot have Win7 also set to 5 channel or you'll get the "files needed to display video are not installed" error. On the Optical device Advanced tab, scroll to the bottom of the list and set it to 5.1, just for a test. It should chime in all 5 speakers. Then set it back to 2.1 and leave it.

Also on that same tab, with Exclusive Mode checked, WMC passes the audio bit stream directly to the AVR without decoding it. If it matters to you, you wont be able to control the volume with the WMC remote unless you have a learning remote and can control the AVR volume..

To regain volume control functionality, uncheck the Exclusive mode box, and WMC will decode the bitstream beofre passing it to the AVR and allow you to control its volume with the remote.

jachin99

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#10

Post by jachin99 » Fri May 17, 2019 1:23 am

I'm assuming your avr has a video out to your TV so if it doesn't that would rule out that idea. Do you have any additional codecs installed if the above suggestion doesn't work out.

andrewjs18

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#11

Post by andrewjs18 » Fri May 17, 2019 10:31 pm

dmagerl wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 12:31 am The auto-volume setting should fix things. When set WMC converts everything to stereo.

If WMC is set to 5 channel, you cannot have Win7 also set to 5 channel or you'll get the "files needed to display video are not installed" error. On the Optical device Advanced tab, scroll to the bottom of the list and set it to 5.1, just for a test. It should chime in all 5 speakers. Then set it back to 2.1 and leave it.

Also on that same tab, with Exclusive Mode checked, WMC passes the audio bit stream directly to the AVR without decoding it. If it matters to you, you wont be able to control the volume with the WMC remote unless you have a learning remote and can control the AVR volume..

To regain volume control functionality, uncheck the Exclusive mode box, and WMC will decode the bitstream beofre passing it to the AVR and allow you to control its volume with the remote.
the auto-volume definitely did fix the issue. I unchecked it, reconfigured WMC to use 5.1, ran their tests and it was good. the only issue I noticed is that sometimes the audio is slightly laggy compared to the picture on the screen...meaning, when you visually see someone speaking, it doesn't always match up with the audio coming from the surround sound.

so apparently there's some issues with the older asus boards based on the research I did last night, it doesn't show any 5.1 settings in the advanced tab for the optical device. I think some folks have gotten around it by using different drivers for different asus boards that seem to work as well as modified drivers from 3rd parties. see the image below, that's all of the advanced settings for the optical device:

Image

cassel11

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#12

Post by cassel11 » Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:53 pm

What 3rd party drivers worked for you?

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