2012-04-29, 19:06
Nice to see ppl helping others here 
Really, the choice of DirectSound vs Wasapi to open the same device depends on your system capabilities. If your card/OS allows it always select Wasapi for the best sound. You have only three reasons to select DirectSound: you are running WinXP which doesn't support Wasapi, your audio device is incompatible with Wasapi's event-driven mode (will always fail to initialize and say format not supported in log), or you wish to allow sounds from other applications.
On my local build I have a small change that puts the WASAPI or DirectSound prefix first - will add to what you guys see soon, just makes it easier/faster.
@ix400 - your question really depends on your receiver, and whether it drops or downmixes the other channels, XBMC will attempt to downmix the rear channel content to the sides/fronts. If you can't hear any difference (and any difference would be small) I would do as gnif advises and set XBMC to 5.0
Really, the choice of DirectSound vs Wasapi to open the same device depends on your system capabilities. If your card/OS allows it always select Wasapi for the best sound. You have only three reasons to select DirectSound: you are running WinXP which doesn't support Wasapi, your audio device is incompatible with Wasapi's event-driven mode (will always fail to initialize and say format not supported in log), or you wish to allow sounds from other applications.
On my local build I have a small change that puts the WASAPI or DirectSound prefix first - will add to what you guys see soon, just makes it easier/faster.
@ix400 - your question really depends on your receiver, and whether it drops or downmixes the other channels, XBMC will attempt to downmix the rear channel content to the sides/fronts. If you can't hear any difference (and any difference would be small) I would do as gnif advises and set XBMC to 5.0
