Please help an AV newbie :(

[tehguy]

Hello all, I hope I have posted this is the right place.

I picked up a Sony amplifier and 5.1 speaker set off a friend a while ago. I was running just the amp with the front left, front right and subwoofer until last night (just for music etc) since I rarely use the speakers.

Then last night I decided to connect up the rest of the speakers so I could enjoy some films in 5.1 surround and also hear music from all around me instead of just in front of me.

It wasn't as simple as I thought though. My PC is running MS Vista X64 SP1 and the amp (Sony STR-DE475) is connected to the PC via a single cable (RCA I believe, but I'm no expert) to the onboard digital coaxial audio output on my motherboard. My headset is using the standard audio jacks so this was the only way to connect the amp, and it's quite convenient since 1 cable can carry 5.1 channels.

Anyway...I got my center, surround left and surround right speakers hooked up last night but I had no luck in getting them to actually work. No matter what I do, I cannot get Winamp to play sound through all of the speakers, it will only use the front left, front right and subwoofer, even with the directsound ouput and surround sound selected. I followed some guide on the Winamp forum to get it to play music through all speakers but it didn't work.

I also had no luck getting sound out of all my speakers from any of my movies (all in XVID AVI's on my HD) in VLC, even the ones which had 5.1 surround. Yes, I did try selecting 5.1 in the audio devices thing, it made no difference, sound still only came from the front two speakers and sub.

Then I tried Windows Media Center, and when running through the setup, it gets to an audio configuration part. I told it that my amp was connected via digital coax and that I had 5.1 speakers. It then played a test tone through each speaker and the sub in turn. The sound went from front left, to center, to front right, to surround right, to surround left, and then to sub. I heard the sound from each speaker in turn, as I would expect to. This confirmed that Windows was capable of using all 5.1 speakers as it should.

I still have the problem of not being able to play music or films through all of my speakers. One thing I did notice is that the display on the amp changed when running through the WMC setup, to something I had never seen before.

This is how the display looks usually when you start playing music or a film:



And this is what it showed when going through the surround sound setup in WMC:



The text was scrolling and I think it said something like "Dolby Digital 3/4". As you can see, the Multi Channel Decoding light is also illuminated.

If anyone can help me solve this problem, I will be very grateful!

Thanks.

[dogbert]

install sp1+ac3filter or a 64 bit version of ffdshow and set everything to "passthrough".

[tehguy]

Originally Posted by dogbert

install sp1+ac3filter or a 64 bit version of ffdshow and set everything to "passthrough".

Thanks for the reply. I'm already on SP1.

I've just installed AC3Filter but I can't see any options for "passthrough". I'm not an expert at, so I'm not sure if this makes sense, but how do I get VLC/Winamp/etc to use AC3Filter?

[dogbert]

vlc decodes and renderes by itself (without employing DirectShow filters). vlc has a bug which messes up the passthrough mode, so you have to use something else, e.g media player classic or windows media player/center.
setting up the passthrough mode is covered in the FAQ on my site.

music is usually stereo and thus limited to the front left/right speakers, but your receiver should have DSP functions for upmixing stereo signals to all the speakers.

[tehguy]

Thanks for your reply. I've installed the 64bit version of ffdshow. I can now get 5.1 sound from my videos which have the 5.1 audio but like you say the sound jitters like hell in VLC.

Haven't managed to get any music to play through all speakers yet. I understand that mp3's and stuff are stereo, but a friend of mine says he can get the sound coming out of all of his speakers, using "double stereo" or something like that. That's what I want to do.

[meansizzler]

OK to put it simple, stereo source will only play back through the front two speakers unless you have set the amp to clone the sound to rest of the speakers now I'm going to make it simple for you, if you listen to me then you will get what you want..

Buy a creative X-Fi xtreme music or gamer sound card, install the software, and connect it to your amp via 5.1 analogue output, and in the creative control panel select 5.1 output and enable "CMMS Stereo Surround", that way sound will come out through all speakers, 5.1 will output as 5.1 and stereo will be clones to all the speakers... job done

[dogbert]

there's no need to go to lengths by buying crappy creative hardware - the DSP in your receiver is very well capable of upmixing the stereo signal, and if this doesn't suffice, here's a filter for winamp which does just that and which works with your digital connection: http://ac3filter.net/projects/winampac3

[tehguy]

Originally Posted by dogbert

there's no need to go to lengths by buying crappy creative hardware - the DSP in your receiver is very well capable of upmixing the stereo signal, and if this doesn't suffice, here's a filter for winamp which does just that and which works with your digital connection: http://ac3filter.net/projects/winampac3

I believe I have tried that program and no matter what settings I use, it will not play sound through the surround or center speakers, only the front two.

I'm really **** at this whole thing, either my system is ****ed or I am screwing up badly.

I honestly do not believe I am ever going to get this to work. I should have tried back on XP, it probably would have been much easier. Vista is just a pain. Nevertheless if I thought it was going to be so much hassle just to play sound through all of my speakers I never would have bothered buying this damn stuff.

[meansizzler]

Originally Posted by dogbert

there's no need to go to lengths by buying crappy creative hardware - the DSP in your receiver is very well capable of upmixing the stereo signal, and if this doesn't suffice, here's a filter for winamp which does just that and which works with your digital connection: http://ac3filter.net/projects/winampac3

The creative actually does a good job of this and does it everytime, no need to put it down just because of the brand, the card does what he wants, he does not want upmixing i.e pro logic two just a clones stereo signal, amps can't do that, especially to the center speaker, I was giving a solution, no need to put it down...

[dogbert]

meansizzler, in that sense, you could recommend to buy a completely new set of speakers and another receiver, and while we're at it, a new PC - presto, problem solved!

back to the problem at hand: tehguy, Vista has a somewhat changed sound subsystem, and hence some compatibility issues arise with older software. Have you tried changing the output soundcard from "Speakers" to "SPDIF" in winamp's output plugin? also, your receiver does in fact support upsampling of stereo sources to multiple speakers - refer to page 24ff of the manual.

[tehguy]

Not sure about the amplifier supporting up sampling - don't have the manual so can't check. It supports Dolby DTS and Pro Logic though, if that's any help.

As for output device in Winamp settings, this is the list:



Primary sound driver would be whatever is selected as the default in Windows I guess, which at the moment is the digital coax output. Realtek Digital output I guess is also the digital coax. 03: Speakers would be my headset, which is connected to the audio jack on the mobo, and USB Audio Device is my USB Skype phone.

[dogbert]

<10 seconds using google result in this: http://www.manualshark.org/manualsha...4/pdf_7489.pdf

the problem with vista is that the sound subsystem has been completely rewritten, and especially in the 64 bit version, there are still some quirks left to be fixed. With SP1, some bugs have been resolved, e.g. the ac3/dts passthrough bug which made it impossible for 32 bit applications to use the passthrough mode for DTS/DD on 64 bit systems. I suspected this bug behind your problems with winamp, but since you have installed SP1, it must be something else. The driver has the required analog and digital endpoints and you've correctly configured it, so my guess would be that winamp does something wrong. Testing WinampAC3 with older versions of winamp (2 or 3) should be worth a try.

[tehguy]

I'm guessing I'm supposed to see some activity on the input and output levels on here when music is playing?

[dogbert]

yeah... the bad news is that I wasn't able to get it working in winamp either. the good news is that it works flawlessly with AC3Filter and Media Player Classic:

[tehguy]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here...