[chris110772]

Hi

Hope someone can help me....

I have XBMC set up on a Windows 7 installation on my main PC. I can get surround sound fine on anything encoded for it, however when i have stereo sources i.e films recorded in stereo and mp3 music, i can't seem to get the stereo to fill to the rear speakers. I have set up the Realtek high definition audio driver to send stereo to the rear speakers which appears to work on other applications like Windows media player, Media monkey and Cyberlink Power DVD. it just doesnt work on XBMC. Is this just the way it is or is there a solution?

System specs below:

XBMC 9.11 Camelot release version R26017
Windows 7 Operating System 64Bit
Intel Dual Core E6850 @ 3.00GHz
2GB RAM
Nvidia GForce 8800 GT Driver Version 196.21
Realtek (integrated on Abit IP35 Motherboard) Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R244

Debug Log:
http://pastebin.com/wUZczcMX

On the sticky it says to post MediaInfo but i have absolutley no clue what that is. i could probably provide it if someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks for any help

Chris

[chris110772]

Update

I looked at the fddshow filters and found that enabling stereo to all speakers on the mixer tab seems to solve the problem.

I had no idea that xbmc used ffdshow.

now the only problem i have, which i have just discovered, is that any videos which are encoded in AAC sound (my ripped blue ray collection) play with the channels all mixed up. i.e. center spear comes out rear left.

anyone come across this before?

[steelman1991]

On the build you are using it doesn't, therefore any changes made would have had no effect - must have been something else you changed that worked

If you want to use DirectShow filters and perhaps benefit from hardware acceleration - check out this thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=61355

[chris110772]

weird.

I tried the DSplayer version, i notice that this does use ffdshow filters as it installs them during the installation?

hover all its done is get me back to my original problem, despite clicking stereo to all speakers in the mixer output tab in the audio setup of ffdshow.

5.1 surround now works correctly in both AAC encoded and other files.

As soon as i get a stereo source in either video or music, just the front left & right speakers give sound out. I have also noticed that in both versions of XBMC that i have tried, when opening audio settings in video (pressing m key during video playback & navigating to audio properties) that the stereo output to all speakers is greyed out. Why would this be greyed out?

Chris

[joshuass]

I am assuming you have this PC hooked to a receiver? If so, why not just set the receiver to use Dolby ProLogic or something like it for stereo signals coming from the computer? Most newer receiver models can do this sort of thing. Thats what I do and it works perfectly.

[chris110772]

No, no receiver.

The sound card is integrated onto the motherboard and i use a set of logitech X-530 speakers plugged into the appropriate jacks on the motherboard.

Chris

[joshuass]

Oh. Got it. So then its an analog-only connection? Perhaps you can check and make sure windows is set up with 5.1 speaker configuration. Also, I believe there's a setting in Windows to force stereo sound to be distributed to all speakers.

Also if it is analog only, don't enable digital playback in XBMC and set its speaker config to 5.1 as well.

[nielsi]

I'm really curious how you managed to make xbmc use the ffdshow decoder for audio. This is basically one of my last to-do's to get my media center running the way I'd like to; upmixing stereo mp3 files to all speakers.

I'd rather not use the dxplayer build, because it was kind of buggy to me and the built-in dxva in xbmc works fine for me. I know ffdshow can upmix stereo and it works great in apps like mpc, but I haven't found a way to get xbmc to use it.

I've got the same type of setup as you have; Windows 7 with an analog speaker set.

(my thread on the topic: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=70839)

[zilexa]

The latest dsplayer isn't that buggy anymore. Most instability comes from the latest main (regular) xbmc svn... so you might give it another shot.

[chris110772]

neilsi,

i don't have a clue how i did what i did in my earlier post with fddshow. as Steelman said, altering anything in ffdshow should not have altered anything in the release build of XBMC 9.11 as it doesn't use the codec?

the only thing i use the ffdshow codecs for is Ripbot which needs them to encode blu ray mt2s files into mp4.

I've tried the dsplayer version of xbmc, it just seemed like to much effort to set it up using dvxa, i just want a release that works so that i can enjoy movies & music without endless tinkering to get it right. i've since found and used one of the nighty builds instead which has fixed all my surround sound problems and works absolutley fine.

having said that i have 2 other xbmc players, one that works on a linux box in the lounge and another that works on my old xbox in the bedroom. both of these still need work to get them working perfectly!

[nielsi]

I kind of fixed my problem by playing around with the drivers of my sound card. It's a 'virtual surround' setting (c-media). I now configured it so all sound from the front speakers is about 80% duplicated to the rear speakers. The only downside to that is that is also does this with 5.1 surround sound. But I compensated that by boosting the rear speaker signal of 5.1 to about 150% to still get a distinct difference between front and rear in 5.1 surround (are you still getting what I'm trying to say :p?) Not perfect, but music now sounds a lot richer in my living room and the surround effect in movies is still pretty much in tact.

I have no experience with Linux or XBox setups, I have heard the 'sound to all speakers' option should work on the XBox , but I guess that's only for stereo audio in video files, not for music.

I too don't like to use the dsplayer version, mostly because like zilexa said, the latest svn's have a lot of bugs so I rather use a slightly older svn (can't exactly remember what build I'm using now, but it's 100% stable for me). And getting the most recent dsplayer inside an older svn build might be a lot of hassle for little gain.

[krade]

*deleted*