Pioneer VSX-819H AVR with HTPC/Sagetv Sound issue

[craigap]

I have my HTPC/SageTV hooked up to a Pioneer VSX-819H that I just got the other day. I'm having an issue getting sound out of the AVR in the format that I think it should be. I'm wondering if it might be a AC3 filter setup issue or something else. I've tried both HDMI out of my Gigabyte 790GX mobo and the S/PDIF. The reciever is supposesd to detect the the source and automatically choose stereo or multichannel. However, everything seems to come out stereo regardless of HDMI or SPDIF . I can change the AVR to PLII and I get surround but without much of a signal if any to the sub.

The sources are for sure 5.1 sound (and only in 5.1), so that makes me think the stream getting sent to the AVR is already decoded into 2 channel.

Also; Control Panel>Sound>HDMI >configure...only gives me "Stereo" as a choice.. And that is only for HDMI. For SPDIF the "configure" button is grayed out. In the Realtek HD Audio Manager doesn't give me any options that pertain to speaker configuration either. One setting that may be worth noting is the "Supported Formats" tab under HDMI properties. It asks what formats my Digital Reciever can decode and I checked DTS and DD. Neither "checking nor "unchecking" seems to make a difference. I think the key here is that I can't set up HDMI to anything other than Stereo.

Any thoughts?

[craigap]

Well, I seem to be half way to figuring out my answer. I at least got it working properly with SPDIF. The key was to uncheck the "Use AC3 encoder" in the SPDIF tab of AC3 Filter. Having this checked was causing everything to be encoded to 2 channel audio.

One part I don't understand is when I made this change I could get no sound from SageTV. I cycled through all the combinations of Render/decoder and finally found that I had to change the decoder to the MPEG Audio decoder instead of default or AC3 Filter. This seemed strange to me, but it works. Can someone explain this to me?

[vikingisson]

Not sure if I can help, I don't know that MB or amp. I have an Asus and a Yamaha amp. Have you configured the BIOS to output S/PDIF? Mine has a setting for that. The OS mixer has a setting to activate digital. You need to make sure that general audio from the OS is working over digital before getting sage to do it. Mine is working Win or Linux.

I really hated the HDMI audio. Optical or coax for me works a lot better. My amp can take component or HDMI video, again the HDMI was a pain because of Windoze trying to be too smart. The best combo I get is component video plus S/PDIF audio and I'll get whatever multi channel audio the source is offering.

[craigap]

I got the HDMI working properly now. I think I may have installed the wrong Realtek Driver. There is a seperate ATI HDMI driver and I think I had just the regular Realtek HD Audio driver installed. Whatever though... It's working.