Correct cofig Soundstorm/WinDVD

[Ozviewer]

Can anyone give me the correct settings to obtain 5.1 from Sage recordings using a soundstorm MB?

I think I must be doing something wrong because:
* Last night I watched a movie on cable tv. I sent the sound directly to the speakers (Logitech 680) via SPDIF. The speakers recognized it as a stereo signal. I then changed the setting to PL2 Movie (prologic). I got voices through the center speaker, and great positional sound through the surround speakers. None of this involved the HTPC.

When I play the stored Sage recording through Win DVD, no matter what settings I have, I cannot obtain even a similar result.

I have Sage set to audio renderer Nforce etc (either as is, or direct sound, makes no difference). I have Nforce set to input stereo mix or spdif, makes no difference. I have Win DVD set to analogue 2 channel or spdif - again no success.

I have Nforce set to dolby encoding, digital output. If I do that, I have no center or rear channel. I can enable the center channel, but this does not result in dialogue only coming out of the center channel, or any sound from the rear speakers (which is what I get if I switch off the computer and send the stereo sound direct to the logitechs).

In other words, I cannot even get close to the result of just directly sending a stereo signal to the speakers without any involvement of the htpc (i.e. turned off).

I bought this mb because of the soundstorm feature, so I would be thrilled if I could get it to work.

I don't know if this makes any difference, but I must have nforce set to wave output, or I don't get any sound.

BTW, all speakers test correctly in the Nforce panel and DVD's provide correct DD sound.

Update:
If I disable dolby encoding and just send digital output to the speakers, I can select prologic on the speaker settings and all speakers work, with the center having higher volume for dialogue.

So enabling dolby encoding of the source is the problem. Could this have anything to do with how the audio is originally processed during Sage recording?

[stanger89]

Originally posted by Ozviewer
If I disable dolby encoding and just send digital output to the speakers, I can select prologic on the speaker settings and all speakers work, with the center having higher volume for dialogue.

So enabling dolby encoding of the source is the problem. Could this have anything to do with how the audio is originally processed during Sage recording?

Your Soundstorm settings will have no effect on the recordings. I'm guessing it's a limitation of your speakers that if they see a DD signal, DPL is dissabled.

[coryw]

I'm not sure if I'm fully understanding the problem but I had issues getting a dolby digital signal from my soundstorm board (Abit NF7-S) to my receiver and I thought that what I found might be useful.

The dolby digital encoding checkbox on the soundstorm settings upmixes signals to DD. You should still be able to send DD without that enabled if the digital output is checked. My problem was that initially I was able to do that from PowerDVD (once I changed the settings) but was unable to do so from the Sage dvd player using the same codec. The movie I was using as a test was U-571 which will start in ProLogic and switch to DD once you're past the menu and into the movie. What I found was that I had to change the settings of the codec using Radlight filter manager. Changing the settings in PowerDVD did not affect how Sage used the codec. Again, I'm not sure if this relates to your problem or not so if it's off topic I apologize.

[Ozviewer]

Cory,
The problem is just to get soundstorm working so it ouptuts 5.1

Here is what I think is supposed to happen (please pardon any gross technical errors, I am mainly guessing!)

Step 1: Stereo sound (L/R RCA) from cable box to Blackbird capture card;

Step 2: Card encodes video and sound in mpeg;

Step 3: I watch the recording in Sage or later play the recording using Win DVD5, or Zoomplayer etc;

Step 4: Digital stereo sound goes to soundstorm and is encoded in dolby digital 5.1;

Step 5: DD sound then output via spdif to logitech speaker spdif input;

Step 6: Logitech speakers decode DD and I get DD 5.1;

But now I am wondering if my mpeg player (Win DVD5, Power DVD, Zoomplayer) decodes the DD before it is sent to the Logitech speakers, i.e. between step 4 and 5. In other words, I am not sure at what point in the sound path that the mcp-t intervenes.

I have ffdshow. I have just downloaded radlight filter manager if I need to use it to fix this, but I don't want to go stumbling around in the dark.


All I am trying to do is to get the soundstorm motherboard to ouptut 5.1. Maybe I have misunderstood just what soundstorm does, but the best I can do at the moment, by going into the ss control panel, is getting the same sound out of the speakers and some lfe. Maybe that is all it is supposed to do?

[coryw]

Okay, I think I understand now. My understanding of soundstorm is that it is supposed to pass through signals that are already 5.1 and upmix signals that aren't (based on the checkbox in the SS control panel). Your steps match my understanding of how the upmix (probably not the correct term but that's the way I think of it) works.

I'm still playing with my setup, my first step was playing a DVD and making sure that it was passing through the already 5.1 signal okay. As I said above that worked for me in PowerDVD but I had to play with Radlight to make it work using the Sage DVD player.

Right now with non DD sources I'm also getting voices coming over my rear surround speakers which is the same problem you're having from the sounds of it. Sorry, I thought you were still back at my first step when I wrote my response. I haven't really had time to play around with it and wasn't too concerned since I don't listen to tv through my stereo now. So, I guess I wasn't much help since I've got the same problem it sounds like.