[LukasW]

Hello together,
i have a HTPC with Asus M378-EM Motherboard based on AMD 780G Chipset.
Ive connected that to my AV-Receiver over HDMI. Picture and sound is there, but i do not get AC3 passthrough over HDMI working on Windows XP (it works on Linux). All i get is stereo :mad:.

When i connect a optical S/P-DIF to my receiver everything works fine (i just have to change the default soundcard in system settings). But i cant use that (not to discuss here).

Ive installed newest drivers (Ati Catalyst 9.2, Realtek High Definition Audio Codecs R2.20, ATI HDMI Audio Device R2.18) on XP Pro SP3.

Is there anybody out there who got that working? WHAT exactly do i have to do?

Thank you for your answers.


PS: I am NOT talking about something like DD-Live, Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD! I know that this is not workin on 780G!

[Obi Have]

Uninstall everything then install Catalyst 9.3. 9.3 will not install the HDMI driver that works if the Realtek HDMI driver is present.

[LukasW]

hmmm... i just tried that. Removed everything (Sound and gfx drivers and software), rebooted and doublechecked my system do not have drivers for that components. Then i installed Catalyst 9.3 suite. After reboot there is no driver for audio hardware
Reading the release notes of the 9.3 driver suite offered the following:

ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 – Windows Vista HDMI audio driver support
integrated into all ATI Catalyst 9.3 packages

Cool. But not for me. I do not use Vista. Did anyone get that working on Windows XP?

[AzzX]

Grab this Driver: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_cataly...miaudio-xp The catalyst pack only works for vista so you need to download the seperate driver.

[LukasW]

Ive installed the additional HDMI-Audio-Driver - without any luck (the same with the last 5 versions and the Realtek HDMI-Audio-Drivers).
I have contacted the ATI/AMD Support, submitted a very detailed system setup report but didnt got an answer for over one month now.
Windows is simply fucked up :mad:
Unfortunately my HD3200 doesnt work with linux satisfactory, moreover i didnt found a nice solution for live-tv on linux now (xbmc users doesnt seem to need that - understandable on xbox, not for any other plattforms ).

[AzzX]

I have just begun using HDMI audio with my ATI HD 4350 and noticed that passthrough is indeed not working for AC3 and DTS passthrough. I notice you are using Xp sp3 - same as myself. Extensive Googling brought me to this page: http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.c...did=106388

Turns out that SP3 (especially RC1) for XP forbids the installation of KB888111 (high def audio patch), despite it not having the updated .inf and .sys files, etc. If this patch was applied in SP2 beforehand there is less likely an issue. Microsoft is making people request this hotfix personally, but it can be found by searching.

I used Winrar to manually extract the KB888111 file to a folder, then through the Device Manager -> Update Driver (for the unknown PCI device) I directed the wizard to search the "commonfiles" directory of the extracted folder.

I am going to try this now and I'll update this thread on the result.

[gammatest]

In my experience, getting multi-channel audio with this chipset over HDMI is not worth the effort.

It works perfect using a Toslink cable and the optical out on the board.

These cables are less than 6 dollars with shipping included. If you make less than 6 dollars an hour it might be worth it to keep trying.

[LukasW]

hello,
ive tried to install 888111, but i do not have any unknown devices. I tried to install the MS-Drivers for my HDMI-Audio, but without any success.

My SPDIF is working great, but i can NOT use it.

Who is interested: The Setup i described in first post is not realy what i am using (its just to simlify it). In reality, my TV is directly connected to the PC, because my TV (Phillips 37PFL7603D) needs ~90ms to calculate the picture. If i send the audio directly to my receiver with SPDIF, the sound is ~90ms to early --> that is not nice . So i need to passthrough the sound to the TV with HDMI and then put it from there into my surround-receiver (over SPDIF) to get 100% synchonized video/audio.

[gammatest]

Well my receiver has a delay that you can set from 0 to like 1000ms for the audio, so if yours has a similar option... set it to 90ms.

[phi2039]

hello,
ive tried to install 888111, but i do not have any unknown devices. I tried to install the MS-Drivers for my HDMI-Audio, but without any success.

My SPDIF is working great, but i can NOT use it.

Who is interested: The Setup i described in first post is not realy what i am using (its just to simlify it). In reality, my TV is directly connected to the PC, because my TV (Phillips 37PFL7603D) needs ~90ms to calculate the picture. If i send the audio directly to my receiver with SPDIF, the sound is ~90ms to early --> that is not nice . So i need to passthrough the sound to the TV with HDMI and then put it from there into my surround-receiver (over SPDIF) to get 100% synchonized video/audio.

... or you could just use the A/V sync feature of XBMC to offset the audio...

[seeker83]

In my experience, getting multi-channel audio with this chipset over HDMI is not worth the effort.

It works perfect using a Toslink cable and the optical out on the board.

pfff, "not worth"... ofcouse it's best to get both sound and audio over the same cable when after all this was the first motherboard that had this nice feature.

Have you tried changing the HDMI setting in bios? I can't remember if it was to enable the sound all together or if it was for multi channel audio. Sadly I couldn't find the post on google either. But have a look in bios under audio or hdmi, or DVI (it's in there somewhere).

I had troubles with that in the beginning, but now it's working nicely with 5.1 DTS or AC3 sound in Windows Vista x64.

[LukasW]

Dont mix up winxp with vista! These are COMPLETELY different. AC3-over-HDMI works PERFECTLY with Ubuntu-Linux - out of the box

But iam using WinXP - because iam using Software that does not run on Linux
Maybe Vista is working, too, but it is just too slow (and i would not use any of its advantages - if there are any ).

[natethomas]

AC3-over-HDMI works PERFECTLY with Ubuntu-Linux - out of the box

It does? Does this mean all of the irritations surrounding ALSA and pulse audio are finally getting fixed?

[LukasW]

Thats what i explored. I tested with VLC on Ubuntu 8.10 - worked as expected, i just had to set HDMI as default. I dont know if there are any problems in ubuntu 9.04 or other distros.