Phew, glad you go it sorted.
I believe some of what you say is down to HDMI handshaking, so both ends must be connected to the relevant devices in order for negotiation to take place on what the HDMI connection will support, so what you see under the HDMI - Intel High Definition Audio sound properties are what is supported by the receiver that's compatible with the laptop.
As for XBMC sound settings, agreed for a novice it can be confusing however as you've found you need to get the OS sorted first and I thinks it's assumed that during sorting the OS you'll learn what's needed in XBMC.
Btw, the difference between Directsound and WASPI is covered on the Wiki, see
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Windows_audio_APIs
Maybe this page could also do with improvement
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBM...ecific_FAQ
I haven't been able to get back to my testing on FreeBSD yet (but nobody in _this_ forum cares about that anyway), but I thought that I should post another follow-up because I have learned a little bit more about how to get properly set up to stream either DD or DTS digital audio out of the HDMI port, at least one *some* laptops (and when using *some* specific drivers under *some* particular versions of Windows).
Since my last post in this thread, I acquired another laptop. This one is an HP 8530p. (Used ones are fairly inexpensive on eBay, and other than the HP 8510p, various MSI laptop models, various Acer laptop models, various flavors of ASUS Eee PCs, and the occasional straggler from other brands, these are about all you will find on eBay that are (a) reasonably priced and (b) have an HDMI output port.)
Anyway, the reason I bought an 8530p, rather than, say, an HP 85610p was because I looked at the graphics specs for each and came to the conclusion that the 8510p probably wouldn't be able to cope with 1080p playback all that much better than the MSI x340 that I already have. (My own experimental results indicate that the MSI X340.... which has Intel 4500MHD graphics... has no trouble at all with bit rates that one would typically see on a commercial DVD DLs, and it even seems to cope well with some 720p material. But when asked to play some content that's actual 1080p, it tries hard, but in the end it has to drop frames with distracting regularity.)
So anyway, I've confirmed that, yes indeed, the HP 8530p has no trouble at all, even with true 1080p material, _however_ that's just with regards to the video. On the audio side, I'm still not where I want to be with the HP 8530p, i.e. being able to stream Dolby Digital or DTS out the HDMI port. I haven't figured out yet if I can make this work, or if it could ever work.
But the situation with the MSI x340 being able to output DD/DTS via the HDMI port is working just great... at least under Windows 7. I learned a lot while investigating this, and I feel obliged to share...
First, just as jjd-uk said, one has to begin by getting the _OS_ (and hardware) support for HDMI pass-through all sorted out and set up properly FIRST, i.e. before you try to do anything else, e.g. like running xbmc, or VLC, or Mplayer, or essentially anything where you are going to want the application to pass compressed multi-channel digital audio out the HDMI port. It really doesn't mater what options you select of XBMC (or whatever). Until you get Windows (and the hardware) ready to do pass-through, it just isn't going to work. (And this is something that I really did not understand initially.)
Second, there are a couple of helpful shortcuts you can use while you are trying to get HDMI audio pass-through working, and these are not immediately obvious. The first is that in order to get to the little window that shows you your "available" audio devices, you don't have to go through control panel and then click on the speaker icon. You can just right click on the speaker icon that ought to appear down in the quick launch bar (at the bottom right of your screen)... at least under Windows Vista & 7... and then left click on "Playback devices". That gets you to the second of the two screens that jjd-uk posted images of. The second shortcut is that from there, you _do not_ need to go to "Properties" and then click on "Supported Formats" in order to find out if Windows and your hardware agree that you are ready for audio pass-through. Instead, the quicker way to find out is just to click once on your HDMI audio device, and then click on the "Configure" button in the lower left. That will pop-up another little window that gives you the option to test your speaker configuration. If on that page you only see two speakers AND if on that page, under "Audio channels" you only see the word "stereo", then do not pass GO, and do not collect two hundred dollars, because as far as Windows is concerned, you haven't hooked things up right (yet). And you have to solve _that_ problem before XBMC and other such programs will let you send your 5.1 channel compressed audio down the HDMI cable.
(The above is all true for Windows 7 and Vista. I don't have access to a Windows XP system to check there, but I do know that configuring audio output looks very different under Windows 2000.)
Another thing that I learned is something that, with perfect 20/20 hindsight, I perhaps should have realized before I even began. And this, it turns out, is yet another critical part of the puzzle.
See, I happen to have a _very_ smart and ultra-modern HDMI-switching capable receiver. It is a Sony STR-DH520. I bought this specifically because it had some really neat (and seemingly very advanced and forward looking) features. Specifically, whereas it has 4 HDMI inputs and one HDMI output (which gets wired up to the TV) and whereas the user can use the whole receiver as a sort of big HDMI switch, selecting which of the four inputs actually has its signals routed through the receiver and out to the HDMI output port at any given time, a lot of receivers on the market can do this (simple?) HDMI switching nowadays. But what recent Sony receiver models can _also_ do is to go into a not-quite-entirely-off mode (which they call "standby") and when the receiver is in that mode, it will _not_ pump any sound out to the connected speakers, but it _will_ still ``passively'' pass through all signals coming in on one of its input HDMI connectors... specifically, the last one that was selected before the receiver was ``powered down''... and route those signals through to the output HDMI port. This is a useful feature because it means that if you don't really want to fire up your whole stereo system, e.g. just to watch TV or a DVD, you don't have to. The thing will ``passively'' pass through your desired HDMI input direct to the receiver's one and only HDMI output. (Meanwhile, the LED display on the front of the receiver will just say "standby" in sort-of dimly illuminated letters.)
So anyway, the point is that for receivers like the STR-DH520 that offer this "passive pass-through" mode, *when* they are actually put into that mode, guess what? Yep... during the time the receiver is in that pass-through mode, it represents itself (via a protocol called EDID) up the HDMI cable and to the laptop as a relatively dumb sort of thing... like a plain TV... that *only* knows out to speak *just* plain old 2 channel stereo (L)PCM. However the minute you hit the power switch on the receiver it (apparently) sends a new and different EDID data block across the HDMI cable, to the laptop, and then presto! From that moment on (until you power down the receiver again) Windows will *now* auto-magically know that the "HDMI Audio Device" it is connected to _does_ speak Dolby Digital and DTS and whatever other stuff both your receiver and your laptop's audio chips can handle.
This simple way to verify what I'm saying is to wire up a laptop (or any kind of Windows 7 or Vista machine that has an HDMI output port, really) to a receiver that has this "passive HDMI pass-through" feature, and then use the steps I described above to look at what Windows thinks the current "HDMI Audio Device" is capable of, and look at that _both_ when the receiver is in pass-through mode _and_ also when it isn't, i.e. when the receiver is in fully-on mode. Note that it does not seem to be necessary to reboot or power cycle the Windows machine when you change the receiver from standby to power-on or vise versa. In either case, the Windows machine should sense that the receiver has switched modes, and thereafter it should (and will, I think) tell you that the HDMI audio output can only do (a) just 2ch stereo (for standby mode) or else (b) DD, DTS, and other such stuff (for fully powered-on mode).
I hope that this information may be of help to someone, or maybe several someones who, like me, might struggle to get 5.1 compressed audio pass-through (to a capable receiver) working in the future. (As you can see, with modern equipment, ALL of the planets have to be in perfect alignment or else the bloody thing just will not work.)
So, like I said, the good news is that 5.1 compressed works great for me, at least under Windows (7) and from the MSI. However the bad news is that I still can't seem to get the HP 8530p to do the HDMI compressed audio pass-through trick yet. Part of the problem may be that the HP laptop only has Windows Vista on it... rather than 7... but I actually don't think that is the problem. Nope. It is most probably either a REALLY STUPID driver non-feature (in which case the blame for it lies with AMD/ATI) or else it is a REALLY STUPID hardware non-feature, in which case the blame lies with HP. Talking to the ATI support guys was no help at all to get this sorted out. I mean the guy I talked to tried to be helpful, but said that really, the hardware vendor (HP) may just not have engineered this capability into the specific final (laptop) product that I have. But then again he _did_ confirm for me that *theoretically* and on paper, the graphics chipset in the HP (Radeon HD 3650) and indeed the entire HD 3xxx family _does_ (according to ATI/AMD) ``support'' (for some value of ``support'') 5.1 compressed & encoded audio.
So I need to call HP next week and ask them WTF is up with this. Wish me luck.
For the HP laptop with AMD/ATI graphics are you using a pre-Frodo build, either a nightly or monthly alpha build? As if you are then make sure you're using the official AMD drivers, the Realtek one's won't work properly with the new audio system AudioEngine introduced after the release of Eden.
For the HP laptop with AMD/ATI graphics, as I explained in my long last post, I am not even trying to use XBMC to get any kind of compressed multi-channel (>2) audio sent out via the HDMI port, because it is obvious from the Windows audio output device related screens/pages/windows/pop-ups that Windows (Vista in this case) is not believing that the HDMI audio is even capable of that. When I left-click on the HDMI audio output device (to highlight it) and then left-click on "Configure" the speaker configuration pop-up only shows two speakers AND the only available option is "stereo".
This is one of the Big Lessons that I learned with all of my fooling around, and that I tried to convey in my last posting... It is a waste of time to try to get XBMC or _any_ application to send compressed multi-channel output out the HDMI output port if _Windows_ isn't already convinced that such a thing is even possible. And on my HP laptop, Windows seems to be of the opinion that it is _not_ possible.
As regards to the ATI display drivers, I tried the original ones that shipped originally with the machine AND also the latest HP-approved versions (newer) AND also the official current/best Catalyst (12.6 "legacy") drivers that I downloaded from AMD's own web site. None of these made any difference to the HDMI audio output situation at all. In desperation, and because some online reports said it might help, I also tried installing up-to-date Realtek drivers, but that also made no difference whatsoever.
It _is_ theoretically possible that HP just messed up the hardware implementation, and that output of compressed multi-channel audio via the HDMI output will just never be possible, no matter what drivers I have. As I said, I need to call HP next week and make some inquiries, but based on the (mis-)information I already got from the first-level tech support at MSI regarding what _their_ hardware can and can't do, I am not entirely hopeful that I will even get the straight story from HP's first-level tech support people.
But I also have an ace in the hole... Eventually, when I have time, I will be trying either or both of (a) LiveCD Ubuntu and/or repartitioning the drive and setting it up to dual boot into FreeBSD+Windows. It will be interesting to see what *NIX operating systems think the hardware is or isn't capable of.
Ronbaby have you ever gotten to a conclusion of the multi channel audio problem over HDMI on the 8530p? I'm in the same boat on Windows 7.
Sorry, no. i got rid of my 8530p quite a long time ago, and I don't even remember now what conclusion, if any, I ultimately reached.
But I did earn a lot since then, and also, XBMC has evolved quite a lot since then (2012).
If you describe your setup, I can try to help you get things working right.
I assume that you have the HDMI cable from your laptop plugged into some sort of an "A/V" receiver, correct? If so, what make and model? Also, have you tried playback from both XBMC on top of Windows and also by using, for example, OpenELEC? (Your results might be quite a bit different for these two possibilities, so you should definitely try it both ways.)
Also, one key thing I learned the hard way was that Windows can be really rather fussy about the set of conditions that must be present in order for it to properly output anything more than 2-channel PCM via the HDMI output port (on any type of machine). And this has nothing to do with XBMC at all. Before you even start XBMC on Windows, you should first check and make sure that Windows itself understands that it is talking (via HDMI) to something that will understand more than 2 channels of audio.
Assuming that you are on Windows 7, the right way to do this is to begin by right clicking on the little speaker symbol you will see in the lower right corner of your screen. Then, from the menu, click on "Playback Devices". This will cause a new little pop-up window to be displayed and that should list for you all of the audio output devices that Windows has seen/recognized on your hardware. The description of at least one of these should include "HDMI". You need to make sure that that one has a green check mark next to it. If it doesn't, then just left click on it (which should highlight it) and then go to the lower right in that little pop-up window and click on Set default. This should cause the HDMI output device to be selected as the (Windows) default audio output device... which is what you want, I think.
Now, once you have done that, left click on the Configure button within that same little pop-up window. This will cause a new little window to pop up and it should be titled Speaker setup (at the top left) and then below that it should say Choose your configuration. A little bit below that you will see Audio channels: and then a little sub-box containing all the possibilities that Windows thinks it is currently OK to output. Mine says this:
Stereo
Quadraphonic
5.1 Surround
7.1 Surround
If you have something similar to the above, then great! In that case just click on the one you want (to select it) and then click on the Test button to test and make sure that you can actually hear all of the channels you were expecting and hoping for. (if not, then something is messed up, obviously).
If your's only says Stereo in the little sub-box then as it currently stands, your Windows doesn't understand that it is hooked up to an A/V type receiver that can handle something more than just 2-channel stereo. If so, don't panic! What I have learned is that Windows (7 at least, and probably others) is not always very clever about understanding what type of A/V receiver it is talking to, nor what its true capabilities are. The solution is to dismiss all those little pop-up windows you got from the above steps, and then power off your A/V receiver and then power it back on (while leaving your Windows machine powered on the whole time). Then repeat all of the steps described above from the start. This (power cycling of the A/V receiver) may be enough to signal to Windows the full capabilities of your A/V receiver and then you can go through the steps above to select (in Windows) 5.1 channel output.
Wahtever you do, be sure to use that Test button to make sure that all of your speakers (and everything else) are all working and that everything has been configured correctly. (Note that some A/V receivers... such as my Sony STR-DH520... have a little bit of a lag before they start outputting the audio that gets sent to them via HDMI. Thus, the tone you get during "Test" on the first speaker may be shorter than the other tones you hear from the other speakers. That's perfectly OK and not a problem.)
Whatever you do, if you want to get 5.1 or 7.1 (or anything more than 2 channel) audio output from XBMC when it is running on top of Windows, you really need to start by doing the steps above, first making sure that Windows itself is doing the Right Thing. Once you have made sure that Windows understands that it is OK to do 5.1 or 7.1 output. Then and only then should you start up XBMC (and then make sure to configure that also, properly, for the kind of audio output you want).