[Jackie78]

Hello,

I have setup XBMC using a 4.1 speaker output, the "Receiver can DTS and AC3" options are disabled.

I output sound optically via my onboard Realtek audio. This works fine for movies, surround is played on the rear speakers.

However, the rear speakers also do get a signal when I play pure stereo MP3 music. Is there a way to have music output as pure Stereo, without involving the rearspeakers?

[tuputamadre]

lol, i want just the opposite, i have 4.1, all analog and my rear speakers are muted when i play music, would like them to work when playing music too.

[Jackie78]

I am still looking for a solution, isn't it possible to play music as stereo only, even if you have a multispeaker-setup?

[Mar16]

Are you speakers hooked up directly to the pc or through a receiver, because if they are hooked up through a receiver, then they should be a surround mode option on your receiver to change it to stereo.

[Jackie78]

Of course I can set my receiver to Stereo, but that's not what I want, because this wouldn't be the original Stereo signal as it was recorded anymore.

I am wondering why XBMC is mixing up stereo to multichannel anyway, without offering an option to configure so. Why can't XBMC simply put the stereo to the left and right channel only, even if multispeakers are configured? I simply cannot understand that

[Ara1]

it's the other way around, your receiver is upmixing the pure Stereo it receives from XBMC to multichannel.
Set it to Stereo and you'll get the original Stereo (Channel-wise at least, most Receivers offer an additional "Direct" or "Pure Direct" Mode where things like the Equalizer get bypassed too).

[junkiepilot]

I've spoken about this before, maybe some help to you...

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=83912

[Jackie78]

I've spoken about this before, maybe some help to you...

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=83912

Thanks, but what you describe confuses me: it looks to me that what you get is what I want, i.e. you get Stereo encodedin a 5.1 signal, with only the left and right channels carrying any signals, the other ones are empty.

My problem is that obviously, XBMC mixes some content to the rear and maybe even the center speaker, which I don't want.

I have a Realtek HD audio chip, connected via SP-DIF (optical) to my Yamaha RX-V 440. The Realtek card supports encoding of multichannel signals to DTS, which is enabled.

So the question is: who messes up the signal? Is it XBMC, or do I have to apply any settings to my Realtek HD audio driver in Win7?

I want a setup that works for music being outpout as 5.1 with only the left and tight channels enabled, as well as movies with 5.1. I don't care for movies that have stereo, so it's not important how they are handled, as loong as music and real 5.1 movies work well.

Any hints how to achieve that?

Thanks alot for anybody who helps.

[scovette]

As has already been said in the thread:

It's not XBMC - XBMC outputs only L & R and you amp is processing it to give sound from the extra channels. Any output on the other channels from XBMC will be silence. It's simply not a case of setting the amp to stereo only - there will be a setting to tell it what to do when it receives a 2-channel signal. E.g. some TV shows have Dolby Surround, which is a 2 channel signal with the surround channels matriced within that signal, so probably by default your amp will take that signal and output it to the rear speakers also.

The amp can't distinguish between that a signal such as that, and the signal XBMC gives. You need to change your amp settings, not XBMC's.

[lbschenkel]

Are you using DirectSound or WASAPI?

If you are using DirectSound, the DirectSound audio renderer (the final Windows component that mix audio from all applications outputting sound and sends the final mix to the speakers) will always up/downmix into the number of channels configured in Windows speaker configuration. For instance, if you tell Windows you have a 5.1 speaker configuration it will always send 5.1 channels to the receiver, even if the application is outputting a stereo stream. I confirmed this by looking at the OSD of my Denon receiver connected to the computer via HDMI: if I set 2.0/5.1/7.1 speaker settings in Windows, I always get the same number of channels in the receiver no matter what the application is outputting. This means, for instance, that if the speaker configuration in Windows is 2.0 and you configure XBMC to use DirectSound and *disable* bitstreaming/passthrough you will *always* get 2.0 in the receiver, even when connected via HDMI, which supports 7.1 channels. And, if you set 5.1/7.1 in Windows, you will always get this number of channels in the output even when playing stereo music. As far as I know this cannot be configured or overridden, it is simply how DirectSound on top of WASAPI works.

Now, since I have a 3.1 setup at home, I cannot say if Windows is sending silence in the side/back channels when upmixing a 2.0 "source" (which from the point of view of the renderer is the application that outputs sound). I can only say that in my case I get no output from the center channel with 2.0, but there could still be audio in the side/back channels that my receivers sends to the front speakers anyway. It should make no difference to me but it actually does, since even when getting silence in all the extra channels what the receiver sees is multichannel PCM input and then I cannot enable ProLogic II when playing stereo music, for instance, because this mode is disabled by the receiver when the input is multichannel. And, if I set 2.0, I won't get multichannel output when watching movies because I don't enable passthrough/bitstreaming (because XBMC can then resample the audio to keep it in sync with the display).

Fortunately, there is an easy workaround for all this: just enable WASAPI mode in XBMC. There will be no DirectSound layer involved at all and whatever you play will be what is sent to the receiver, no upmixing or downmixing. In the event that your audio device does not support some audio format (bit rate, frequency, whatever) then XBMC will automatically fall back to DirectSound. The only drawback of using WASAPI is that other applications cannot output sound at the same time, but most probably this will not be a concern for you.

I hope that fixes your issue.

[Jackie78]

Thanks alot, lbschenkel, since I activated WSAPI, my sound settings work exactly the way I want them to! Perfect, is there an article describing exactly what XBMC using WASAPI does?

[spiff]

using wasapi bypasses the software mixer in windows.

[ironical]

Hi, I have just started with this problem, I always had pure stereo output for music, but suddenly it has started playing in surround. The output mode in Audio settings is WASAPI, but still surround through the speakers. Does anyone have any suggestions please. XBMC is running on Acer Revo Windows 7. Thanks