Hey Folks,
Just wanted to share a couple of issues I've had to deal with:
5.1 Rear Speakers Reversed when testing with Windows 7 Speaker Setup Configuration
System details
Lenovo M58p Intel Core 2 Duo, 6GB of RAM, Win7 SP1 x64
ASUS Radeon HD6450 - Driver 9.12.0.0, with AMD High Definition Audio driver (on-board sound is disabled in BIOS)
Onkyo TX-SR508
Panasonic Viera P42G20
XBMC 12.0 Frodo with XBMCHub installed
As part of the install of my new ASUS Radeon HD6450 graphics card, I wanted to make sure Windows could output audio correctly via HDMI to my A/V receiver before I installed and configured XBMC. Off I went to my Sound control panel, clicked on the Playback tab and highlighted AMD High Definition Audio. I clicked Configure and selected 5.1 Surround in the Audio Channel section.
Here's where the fun started. I tested each speaker individually, only to realise that when I clicked the rear left speaker, the test tone came out of the rear right speaker, and vice versa. So I went into the Onkyo settings and verified that the 5.1 was set up correctly by running the 5.1 test directly from the Onkyo GUI.
Then I started searching online for a solution. I read through numerous XBMC forums, through AVForums etc, but could not find anything to resolve the problem. I uninstalled and reinstalled all graphic/audio drivers, tried different AMD audio drivers, tried the Realtek drivers but with no luck.
Eventually after 2 days of baaaaag breaking troubleshooting, I decided to download a completely seperate 5.1 surround sound test. Well would ya look at that. It works. I downloaded another 5.1 surround sound test, she works. I went back and tried the Windows 7 one, still doesn't work. Incredible.
So here's the bottom line, if you're thinking about doing the seemingly sensible thing and testing your 5.1 surround sound through Windows, don't bother. It may not give you the correct results back. Always download seperate 5.1 surround sound test files and do your testing that way. If you're unsure of what your A/V receiver supports, you can download specific Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and other audio formats for testing here.
One final point, since getting everything up and running correctly, I've noticed that most of the files that you can stream from NAVI-X or Icefilms or whatever have 2.0 audio encoded, even the 1080p streams. Being fairly new to all this I was surprised to find this out. I can only assume that the files would be much bigger with 5.1 surround sound encoded, so 2.0 seems to be the norm.
On that note, can anyone recommend a plugin that would give me access to movie streams that have 5.1 audio encoded?
Just wanted to share a couple of issues I've had to deal with:
5.1 Rear Speakers Reversed when testing with Windows 7 Speaker Setup Configuration
System details
Lenovo M58p Intel Core 2 Duo, 6GB of RAM, Win7 SP1 x64
ASUS Radeon HD6450 - Driver 9.12.0.0, with AMD High Definition Audio driver (on-board sound is disabled in BIOS)
Onkyo TX-SR508
Panasonic Viera P42G20
XBMC 12.0 Frodo with XBMCHub installed
As part of the install of my new ASUS Radeon HD6450 graphics card, I wanted to make sure Windows could output audio correctly via HDMI to my A/V receiver before I installed and configured XBMC. Off I went to my Sound control panel, clicked on the Playback tab and highlighted AMD High Definition Audio. I clicked Configure and selected 5.1 Surround in the Audio Channel section.
Here's where the fun started. I tested each speaker individually, only to realise that when I clicked the rear left speaker, the test tone came out of the rear right speaker, and vice versa. So I went into the Onkyo settings and verified that the 5.1 was set up correctly by running the 5.1 test directly from the Onkyo GUI.
Then I started searching online for a solution. I read through numerous XBMC forums, through AVForums etc, but could not find anything to resolve the problem. I uninstalled and reinstalled all graphic/audio drivers, tried different AMD audio drivers, tried the Realtek drivers but with no luck.
Eventually after 2 days of baaaaag breaking troubleshooting, I decided to download a completely seperate 5.1 surround sound test. Well would ya look at that. It works. I downloaded another 5.1 surround sound test, she works. I went back and tried the Windows 7 one, still doesn't work. Incredible.
So here's the bottom line, if you're thinking about doing the seemingly sensible thing and testing your 5.1 surround sound through Windows, don't bother. It may not give you the correct results back. Always download seperate 5.1 surround sound test files and do your testing that way. If you're unsure of what your A/V receiver supports, you can download specific Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and other audio formats for testing here.
One final point, since getting everything up and running correctly, I've noticed that most of the files that you can stream from NAVI-X or Icefilms or whatever have 2.0 audio encoded, even the 1080p streams. Being fairly new to all this I was surprised to find this out. I can only assume that the files would be much bigger with 5.1 surround sound encoded, so 2.0 seems to be the norm.
On that note, can anyone recommend a plugin that would give me access to movie streams that have 5.1 audio encoded?
