No sound in windows 7

[JonTom]

I just finished upgrading to w7 64bit and it went nice and smoothly.

I installed ffdshow and no other codecs. I tested Sage Client and was thrilled, everything was working great. I was able to play h264, divx/xvid, mp3, and of course mpg2 recordings.

I was listening to some music and then my wife walked in, so i paused it to tell her how fantastically sage was running on this new machine (so smooth, so fast, so so so). I left the mp3 paused for a few minutes while we talked about it, and at one point I remember hearing some sort of strange noise come from the speakers (an uninstall noise? a crash noise? a disconnected usb device noise? I don't remember but i remember thinking it was a "negative" noise, if that makes sense).

And now, I cannot get sound from sagetv at all. No problem getting sound from any other applications. If I check the volume mixer, the sage application's volume meter moves (sometimes - it depends if i select default renderers or devices, etc. some combos result in moving meter, some not) but the main volume meter never moves, and there's no sound. I've tried rebooting, I've tried (i think) all different combos of renderers and devices and filters. Some videos are played with MPlayer (according to the volume mixer) and those DO get sound, but if I change the 'always use dshow player' line in the properties file, Sage crashes on many types of files.

Any suggestions? I'm at a bit of a loss.

[SHS]

try uninstall ffdshow

[JonTom]

tried that, it didn't work.


i've also tried a repair installation of the sage client, no dice. may try to uninstall and reinstall next.

[SHS]

C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\ try del SageClient.properties and SageClient.properties.autobackup

[JonTom]

sagetv directory does not exist in this location...

[JonTom]

i have UAC turned off, so i found the properties files in the program directory. didn't help.

i tried uninstalling sage and reinstalling, no change. i have no idea what to check next...

[gplasky]

What are your audio device choices? If you have Speaker (Realtek...) pick that one. Also choose AC3Filter for audio renderer.

Gerry

[Clift]

And you're pretty sure SageTV isn't just muted?

[JonTom]

Sound is back. It's a bit of a workaround but an uninstall, complete delete of sagetv directory, removal of ffdshow, and sage reinstall (twice... ) has allowed specifying the Speaker device to work now (although the speaker device is set as the default in windows).

That's a little annoying because i wanted to use the window's sound setting dialog to change the default device and have it recognized by Sage, but it's better than no sound at all.

[kamikaze2112]

I've just experienced the same problem. no amount of screwing around with audio settings seems to work. sagetv shows up in the mixer, and you can see the audio level moving but no sound.

EDIT: I seem to have fixed it. I neglected to install the audio drivers from gigabyte for my motherboard, so I downloaded and installed them, rebooted, and it seems to be working again.

[bhyman1]

Another thing to look at with Sage is that it still installs a gimped up AC3 Filter with default settings that may not work on your system.

It's always best to install the full version of AC3 Filter and either disable it as the audio codec so you can use something else, like FFDShow which is what I use, or set it up properly.

[Polypro]

I really wish Sage would not install AC3Filter if it sees a current AC3 Install. That said, I was going to suggest Sage's volume slider/mute as well...thats gotten me a few times

P

[kamikaze2112]

ok, this is getting frustrating.

Sound went out on sage again this morning, just after I left for work. Of course, my gf is off for the holiday break and wanted to do nothing but watch movies and tv all day. I tried re-installing the audio drivers (thank god for VNC) but it didn't make any difference. I will try re-installing sage when I get home, and see if that works.

[Tiki]

Yeah, I've seen a few times now over the last several months where the volume slider inside Sage mysteriously moved all the way to "0". But it was only at 0 for certain files (h.264 encoded files I think), or maybe it happened when switching from playing an SD file to an HD file. It's happened on both my HD-200 extender and on the PC running Sage both under Win7 and WinXP. But it hasn't happened enough for me to pick up the complete pattern.

[kamikaze2112]

that's the thing, it's not at 0 volume. I've never had this problem running under XP, and I ran sage for nearly 2 years on XP.

Anyway, I'm just starting the removal of SageTV, and i'll reinstall it and see what happens.

EDIT: reinstall no workie. WTF

[kamikaze2112]

ok, seem to have it fixed again for the time being.

after uninstalls and reinstalls of both sagetv and my audio drivers that didn't work, I started looking around on the forums. this seems to be the only thread on this subject, so after reading it a little more thouroughly i think I've found a fix.

exit sage (and I'd recommend stopping the service if you use it)
go here: http://ac3filter.net/releases/ac3filter_1_63b
download the full installer
install it
open the config util
go to the spdif tab and tick the box that says "Use SPDIF"
click ok
restart the sage service if you stopped it
restart sage
go to the detailed setup
go to the video/audio section
under MPEG2 audio decoder filter select AC3Filter
Enjoy your now working audio, maybe

I'm sure there's a bunch of other shit you can play with in the AC3Filter config util, but I'm happy with the defaults for now.

[kamikaze2112]

Figured it was too good to be true,

Now I've got no audio on SD tv or mp3s. HDtv seems to work fine. everything worked last nite for about an hour, just after I went to bed my gf told me this morning she went from watching a movie to tv and that's when it screwed up.

[JonTom]

yeah, i'm back to no sound again now too. very frustrated.

[sic0048]

Check your Windows Audio Device - see what it is set to. I read where another user found that the default audio device got changed to something else. He changed it back to "Default" and brought back the audio just fine.

Reinstalling the Audio Device might have done basically the same thing, just with a lot more work.

Just a thought.

EDIT - it looks like this was already suggested earlier in the thread. Sorry for the repeat. I think Windows7 has changed some basic things regarding how audio works. I know people over at CQC are having a hard time getting the TTS system to work correctly with Windows 7. Not exactly the same thing, but points to some basic changes in how Windows7 handles audio stuff in general.

[kamikaze2112]

Originally Posted by JonTom

yeah, i'm back to no sound again now too. very frustrated.

maybe it's too cold up here for sage, eh LOL

If i could pick your brain a bit, I'm assuming you're using SPDIF output to a receiver? Are you having problems with all audio, or just some formats? I find that anything that uses MPlayer for output seems to work fine, but everything else is fubar. What sound card are you using? I'm using the built in sound on my gigabyte mobo, which is a Realtek card. I wonder if using a different sound card might make a difference