How is your audio quality?

[kevpriest]

I'm really loving Sage. The PVR functionality has been working perfect for me for over a month, and the interface is fine. I'm looking forward to Studio so I can do away with some of the other front end stuff I use.

I've done a lot of work with picture quality, and now, with a Radeon 9600 non-pro, the ATI component adapter, a decent cable signal, and the PVR250 set for DVD standard quality, I'm happy with the picture.

But I'm not happy with the sound. It may be something peculiar to my setup (in particular, my cable provider), but before I go changing things too much I figured I'd check in with the board.

I use a PVR250 in an nVidia A7N8X Deluxe. I run SPDIF out of the Asus board into my Sony receiver for Dolby Digital decoding into a 5.1 speaker set up. DVDs pass through digitally and sound beautiful. Windows sounds and MP3's are encoded into DD by the Asus board, and they sound fantastic. But my television sounds like crap.

It's very tinny, with no dynamic range at all. I was listening to a music video yesterday with a singer hitting some high notes and it was just awful. I don't mean doesn't live up audiophile standards, I mean my wife is coming in from the kitchen wanting to know what the heck is wrong with the sound. High notes in particular sound like they're coming through a kids tape recorder. In the mid-range, things are okay, but muddled sounding, with all the noises stepping all over each other.

Now, I suspect my problem is my cable provider. For some reason, I don't receive any of my stations in stereo. Everything is mono (according to the PVR250 and according to my own listening). I believe that the Asus board is choking on trying to create a 5.1 signal out of a monaural signal. The only thing that confuses me is that I can turn off the DD encoding in the Asus Soundstorm control panel, and it still sounds like crap. When I watch television through the VCR, otherwise passing through the same receiver and speakers, it doesn't sound this bad. It's still not great (mono), but not THIS bad.

What should be my expectation for sound out of Sage? Is it normal to lose range because of the compression? Should I be able to do better?

I'm planning on working with my cable company to see what the issue is with Stereo vs. Mono (they're a very small company, so I might be able to influence them if there's a workable solution). But I'm not sure if that's really my problem or I'm just hearing something that's inherent to recording through the PVR250.

Thanks!

KevPriest

[mlbdude]

The audio in my recordings sound fine. I cannot tell a difference since they are recorded at a very high bitrate. I would guess that you have a configuration problem with your sound card. I know that does not help, but at least you know you can perhaps fix something . Good luck.

[kevpriest]

Thanks for the response, mlbdude. I actually don't think it's the sound card, since videos from other sources sound great (from my digital camcorder, for instance). But it's very good to know that your recordings sound good, that way I know that there should be a way to fix this. Sage doesn't have a recorded clip somewhere on the site to download, do they? Something I could play on my system and see how the sound sounds? My logic: If it sounds good, then I've eliminated all the output related items (sound card, etc), and can focus on the input side (pvr250, cable provider).

Thanks again,

KevPriest

[roddym4]

KevPriest

just a quick question, I have SPDIF on my mother board and I bought a three pin connector with a coax and toslink connector built into a standard PCI bracket. The pins on the board are actally 5 pins, but the last two are for SPDIF in, which I don't need.

However, although DVD playback shows 5.1 AC3 audio and Windows volume control has a column for SPDIF out, nothing is actually coming out of the coax. Any ideas?

Thanks for your help. By the way, I use L/R RCA jacks straight out of my cable box to the 8mm stereo mini jack on my Hauppauge PVR 250 for recording, and recordings sound very good.

[kevpriest]

Hi, Roddym4. It's tough for me to help much, as I'm not familiar with your set up, but on my board I had to specifically select digital out in my sound configuration (in my case, nVidia SoundStorm). That's what enabled the SPDIF functionality.

[gplasky]

kevpriest
I have the exact same motherboard as you do. I have SPDIF going to my Sony DD receiver. All sound out, including TV, sounds excellent. I would look at your cable provider. I have Comcast as cable provider. Even though I am not using the cable box for HTPC yet, just straight cable connection to PVR250.

Gerry

[kevpriest]

gplasky,

Thanks for the info. Sounds like you've got an almost identical set up, so that really makes me suspect the cable provider. I was experimenting last night and discovered that, for some reason, the premium channels sound MUCH better. My recording last night of Carnivale on HBO sounded the way I think it should sound. It's just the non-premium channels that sound so horrible. I suspect that they're doing some sort of compression on the channels. I live in a high-rise and our provider actually beams the signal to the top of our building from their building about a mile away, and then distributes it over the building's cable system. I'll give them a call and see if there are any options.

Thanks again!

KevPriest

[kevpriest]

Just in case someone reads this thread with a similar problem:

I noticed that on some channels I was getting great audio, on others it was terrible. If I watched cable without going through the PC, it was fine on all channels. I suspected something to do with the cable company, maybe using some kind of compression. Checking with the cable company, they said there was no compression that should affect this, and definitely nothing different on the channels that were sounding different. Hmmmm.

Then I ound this post from Jeffrey:

Try this and let me know the results:

Open the Sage.properties file while SageTV is not running, and change:
mmc\feature_mask_disable=0
to
mmc\feature_mask_disable=8


__________________
Jeffrey Kardatzke
CTO
Frey Technologies, LLC

I tried it, figuring what the heck. Sure enough, all my channels sound equally good now! I'm not sure what this setting does. Jeffrey was replying to a fellow that had a similar problem back in July. At any rate, I'm happy. Wish I understood what I just changed, but I'm happy.

KevPriest

[maximumpig]

I too can't get any channel off my set-top cable box to be received as stereo by my WinTV PVR-350, even though my VCR indicates the signal coming from the cable box is in fact stereo. I have Time Warner Cable in lower manhattan.

I am going to try the solution regarding the Sage.properties file and report back. (I am not at my home pc right now). BTW I get the same problem with Hauppauge's WinTV2000 so I am wondering if there is a similar fix for that app?

[corykim]

[edit] OK, ignore this post. I didn't realize how stale the thread was.


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My motherboard has the original nForce chipset, and I experience similar problems with Sage under certain conditions.

My receiver is a Denon AVR 4800. When in "Direct Digital" mode, my DVD's play fine through a hardware DVD player, or through PowerDVD. However, SageTV's output sounds awful. It sounds as if the sound waves are canceling each other out in a weird way. The best way to describe it is that it sounds like I'm listening through a long metal tube.

My receiver also has a THX Home Cinema mode, and if I switch to that mode, all my output sounds great. I don't really know why this would be the case, but you may want to look into it.

[Omegadsl]

I'm only getting mono sound in/out of my PVR-250. I am outputting L/R stereo from my cable box into the mini-plug on the PVR-250. I am using an M-Audio Revolution card to ouput via spdif to a klipsch DD-5.1. I've also tried switching to analog out and the M-Audio control panel still indicates that it is only outputting mono. If I plug my cable box L/R stereo directly into the DD-5.1, I do get stereo sound. This means to me that there is some issue with the PVR-250 (unless I'm missing something). Any ideas?

-Omegadsl

[Omegadsl]

I forgot to mention that I have no problems playing back DVD's or any other media through this setup. I'm thinking that it must be that the PVR-250 is just not recording stereo for some reason. Has anyone here heard of anything like this? I'd check shspvr.com, but it's down at the moment .

-Omegadsl

[corykim]

In the Sage Multimedia settings, can you confirm that your card is configured to record in stereo?

[Omegadsl]

Yep, it's configured for stereo. I should mention that this problem also occurs in WinTV2000.

-Omegadsl

[Omegadsl]

Another odd thing: If I plug my cable box directly into my line-in on my M-Audio Revolution card and check through Windows sound recorder, I get stereo sound. I guess this means that it isn't some issue with my sound card. So...I'm guessing that either it is some sort of driver issue or my PVR-250 card is defective.

-Omegadsl

[Omegadsl]

Just as a followup, my PVR250 was defective. I replaced it with my old -15 PVR250 and sound is now okay (stereo).

-Omegadsl