Haizum74

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Just got a new amp and wondering if

a) I can use some spare surrounds instead of 'proper' atmos speakers for the atmos channels for the time being and then upgrade to atmos speakers
b) as most of my film watching is through my PC, changing W10 sound setting to Dolby Atmos OR 7.1?

Speakers are Q Acoustic 2010i's and I can only have them on top of my front floor standers. Ceiling about 12ft high and not possible to have in ceiling ones.


Thanks.
 
b) as most of my film watching is through my PC, changing W10 sound setting to Dolby Atmos OR 7.1?

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but as far as I'm aware you'll need to bitstream audio out to an amp to get Atmos, no player can decode and output either the PCM or multichannel streams for Atmos.

This means it doesn't matter what version of windows you're on, you need a player capable of streaming atmos. I use JRiver, but I think MPC-BE and Plex should work as well, probably Kodi too.
 
a) I can use some spare surrounds instead of 'proper' atmos speakers for the atmos channels for the time being and then upgrade to atmos speakers
Yes, either point them towards the ceiling at a similar angle to dolby enabled speakers, or have them at the top of the walls as heights.

b) as most of my film watching is through my PC, changing W10 sound setting to Dolby Atmos OR 7.1?
Yes, I use PC's too. Leave Windows sound settings as stereo, otherwise Windows will always send multi channel audio to your amp, even if it's stereo, and fill the empty channels with silence. This will prevent your amp from upmixing.

As above, use a movie player that is able to bitstream via WASAPI which over rides the Windows settings and just sends the pure audio to your amp for it to decode. Many players have this capability on the Windows 10 platform, Kodi, MediaPortal, MPC-HC with LAV, Plex Media Player are the ones I use / have used.
 
Yes, either point them towards the ceiling at a similar angle to dolby enabled speakers, or have them at the top of the walls as heights.


Yes, I use PC's too. Leave Windows sound settings as stereo, otherwise Windows will always send multi channel audio to your amp, even if it's stereo, and fill the empty channels with silence. This will prevent your amp from upmixing.

As above, use a movie player that is able to bitstream via WASAPI which over rides the Windows settings and just sends the pure audio to your amp for it to decode. Many players have this capability on the Windows 10 platform, Kodi, MediaPortal, MPC-HC with LAV, Plex Media Player are the ones I use / have used.

Leave it to stereo? Wouldn't games that use 5.1 be then sent only as stereo to the amp?

I've used MPC-HC but found it stuttery with 4k video so will try one of the others,. Thanks for the reply and help
 
If you set the games to use hardware direct/wasapi then they'll send the stream direct to the AVR ignoring the windows sound mixer. That'll (usually) always sound better.

Stuttering will be because of your video processing settings and GPU capability. MPC-HC is definitely capable of playing back a 4k HDR signal flawlessly, even running MadVR. What's your display and what GPU do you have?
 
Display is a Phillips PUS6754 TV and using a Radeon 480 8gb GC. No stutter when using Windows media to play 4k content.

Tried the stereo setting and surprisingly works. I was getting quite low sound when it was set to atmos or 5.1 so I imagine it was doubling decoding, i.e the PC then the amp.
 
It's unlikely to be the player and more likely to be the renderer. However, changing player might well change the renderer and so will solve your problem. Your card is equivalent to an Nvidia 1060, which isn't a bad card at all.

Try Kodi, but if it still doesn't work have a look at the renderer in MPC. Something like overlay or EVR will be much lighter on the GPU than, say, MadVR with all of it's tone mapping settings enabled.

Edit - also, MPC-HC is a dead branch, MPC-BE (black edition) is the current branch.
 
MPC-BE sorted it, many thanks. All up and running spot on.
 

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