ArcSoft TotalMedia (English Version) Availability

[SamuriHL]

I agree with you that in theory it should be handled like DTS-HD MA for example.
Every program that is playing audio sends an LPCM stream to the soundcard (except bitstreaming).
The soundcard normaly just makes the DA sampling.
I think if you play an LPCM track from TMT, the route is just the same. The exception however is, that you get it just passed through if the signal matches the settings in the audio card. If not it resamples it. Don't know if you understand what I try to explain but i think thats the reason the xonar control panel is used when plaing LPCM.

Oh I understand what you're saying. It's just that my testing doesn't necessarily correspond with it. See, here's my problem. If I set TMT3 to 7.1, reclock kicks in and all is well. This tells me it's not using the PAP which allows reclock to work with the audio. If I set it to pass through, otoh, reclock NEVER kicks in which tells me it's using the PAP. If we're using the PAP, there is *NEVER* a reason to resample the audio as we're making the assumption that we're bitstreaming and letting the receiver deal with it. IOW, I see this as a severe bug in the Xonar driver tbh. When doing PAP, it should never mess with the sample rate no matter what the Xonar CP says. See my point now?

 

[andy o]

When doing PAP, it should never mess with the sample rate no matter what the Xonar CP says. See my point now?

Not only when doing PAP, IMO. But in any case, I've seen many people complain about that and asking for auto switching of sample rate (again, more important for me would be auto-channel switching, but any one is all right). You might wanna stop by the Asus forums see what people are saying.

 

[SamuriHL]

Not only when doing PAP, IMO. But in any case, I've seen many people complain about that and asking for auto switching of sample rate (again, more important for me would be auto-channel switching, but any one is all right). You might wanna stop by the Asus forums see what people are saying.

Yea, I'll check it out. The issue is quite annoying at best. If I select bitstreaming, that's what I expect to get no matter what audio format it is. Just pass it on unmolested to the receiver. How hard is that?

 

[bachuka]

Yea, I'll check it out. The issue is quite annoying at best. If I select bitstreaming, that's what I expect to get no matter what audio format it is. Just pass it on unmolested to the receiver. How hard is that?

SamuriHL, any updates here? At the verge of buying TMT3 but want to know your opinion of this product. I'm using TMT2 with Radeon 4850, same onkyo receiver as you, probably wont buy Asus Xonar.

 

[colindale15]

SamuriHL, any updates here? At the verge of buying TMT3 but want to know your opinion of this product. I'm using TMT2 with Radeon 4850, same onkyo receiver as you, probably wont buy Asus Xonar.

I have the same gear, everything is working perfectly with ATI 9.3. and HDMI
connection off the 4850 card.

 

[SamuriHL]

SamuriHL, any updates here? At the verge of buying TMT3 but want to know your opinion of this product. I'm using TMT2 with Radeon 4850, same onkyo receiver as you, probably wont buy Asus Xonar.

The issue I'm dealing with only affects the Xonar. I'm not at home for a few days so I haven't had time to test different LPCM configurations. With the ATI, it's irrelevant. You'll get 48/16 regardless of what you're playing for an HD audio stream. I'm honestly lovely TMT3 so far. I watched Dark Knight the other night on the Xonar using TMT3...spectacular.

 

[SamuriHL]

I have the same gear, everything is working perfectly with ATI 9.3. and HDMI
connection off the 4850 card.

Which HDMI driver are you using? The realtek or the built in? The built in didn't work well for me when I was doing some tests the other night.

 

[andy o]

OK, right off the bat I'm running into some trouble. (Just installed the HDAV). TMT3 is not bitstreaming, but that's not my main problem right now. Is this what you're seeing in the Vista audio panel?


I was sort of expecting an HDMI device there. I am getting audio, but it seems the Xonar control panel bypasses altogether the Vista mixer. WASAPI with foobar seems to work, but it doesn't change channels or even sampling rate. You gotta set it yourself MANUALLY (both), which is what I was trying to avoid with WASAPI in the first place. It seems there's no 88.2kHz support, but I'll test that later. I know WASAPI is working because I got the DTS .wav file to work. I gotta set the Xonar to stereo output and 44.1kHz, anything else and it's noise. Foobar also has to be set at 100% or else there's no sound.

I am also not getting S/PDIF passthrough with AC3Filter like I was getting with the 4550. Gotta catch some sleep, will update later.

 

[knight_of_ni]

I was having the same problem with spdif, my card doesn't support hdmi. Before opening powerdvd or whatever program I selected "digital output" and clicked "Set as default" and then spdif worked. My card is a creative x-fi platinum fatality. Of course to make analog work I had to select "Speakers" and set as default. If anyone knows a simpler way, please speak now!

 

[w1seman]

OK, right off the bat I'm running into some trouble. (Just installed the HDAV). TMT3 is not bitstreaming, but that's not my main problem right now. Is this what you're seeing in the Vista audio panel?


I was sort of expecting an HDMI device there. I am getting audio, but it seems the Xonar control panel bypasses altogether the Vista mixer. WASAPI with foobar seems to work, but it doesn't change channels or even sampling rate. You gotta set it yourself MANUALLY (both), which is what I was trying to avoid with WASAPI in the first place. It seems there's no 88.2kHz support, but I'll test that later. I know WASAPI is working because I got the DTS .wav file to work. I gotta set the Xonar to stereo output and 44.1kHz, anything else and it's noise. Foobar also has to be set at 100% or else there's no sound.

I am also not getting S/PDIF passthrough with AC3Filter like I was getting with the 4550. Gotta catch some sleep, will update later.

My windows vista mixer looks the same, no HDMI device listed. Just Speakers and Digital output.
Regarding TMT3 you need to make the "HDMI pass through" setting BEFORE you start to play a movie. Open TMT3 and select the settings tab with the Audio settings. Choose "HDMI pass through".
You won't be able to change to bitstream while playing a movie.

I have no clue about what WASAPI is, sry.

 

[andy o]

I did set passthrough before playing, but still, right now that's not my main concern. If this thing doesn't do autoswitch for me (which the ATI will happily do with Reclock or WASAPI-exclusive) then it's no use. I wanted bitstreaming for all the mapping and decoding shenanigans, now this card is giving me the solution for blurays, but raising problems and inconveniences for all other content.

Frankly, I'm at work now, but I'll be back home soon enough, and I'll do more testing. From some stuff I've read people at the Asus forums are more concerned with auto-sample-rate switching than auto-channel switching. I mean, which is more blatantly obvious to be an inconvenience?

WASAPI, by the way, is just like "bitstreaming" LPCM. The ATI 4000 cards already are very good at this, and can "bitstream" every sample rate and channel configuration, including 88.2kHz and presumably 176.4 too. WASAPI will also switch your channel configuration. If downsampling was the only downside of PowerDVD 8, I'd rather stay with that, Reclock and my ATI 4550. Hopefully there's some news about this stuff.

WASAPI is working with the Xonar, but here you need to set BOTH sample rate and number of channels MANUALLY for it to work. what's the point of that? Gives you bitstream with one program, takes away pretty much all the practical benefits of an HDMI connection from all the other programs???

 

[andy o]

Ok, did some more testing, and getting disappointed really fast. This is what I'm thinking right now.

As far as I can tell the Vista audio panel only controls the analog part and the SPDIF part. The HDMI part is controlled directly by the Xonar driver, and that's why HDMI doesn't show up as an option in any other program than TMT3, in the way that the Ati 4000 cards do. This card is turning out to be a huge disappointment. I don't want bitstreaming bad enough for it to break all other functionality and convenience of a standard Vista HDMI device.

This Xonar HDMI doesn't work with s/pdif output of AC3filter, doesn't work with WASAPI, doesn't do any kind of auto switching, neither for channels nor for sampling rate, doesn't work with Reclock, and is not visible by any program that could take advantage of it. PowerDVD8, for example, is not showing the HDMI option anymore, because it doesn't detect an HDMI device. That setting would make it possible for Reclock to auto switch your Vista channels automatically. Alas, neither work.

I just cancelled the nvidia card I was gonna use with this Xonar. I think I'll stay with the Ati and Slyplayer unless the state of the Xonar changes drastically, and it lets every program detect it as a standard HDMI device, and is able to auto-switch.

 

[spcav]

Sorry for the possibly noobby question (I just installed my Xonar 1.3 + TMT 3 and I am enjoying bitstream from my PC for the first time – so I am quite shocked ) but why do you need Xonar to be reported as a ‘’standard HDMI device’’.

Which functionality do you miss when it is recognized as ‘’Speakers’’ (since the physical audio output remains HDMI)?

 

[andy o]

You're not missing (off the top of my head) anything that analog could do, but there are several reasons why we choose HDMI over analog besides sound quality. The wonderful Reclock app and WASAPI-exclusive functionality have made me see the light!

Basically, one advantage of WASAPI-exclusive is that it's passing-through untouched LCPM to your receiver. It's "bitstreaming" it (if we can say that). A neat thing about this, is that the LCPM output will be switched to the sampling rate of the source automatically, and also the number of channels.

If your source is stereo, your receiver will only receive 2 channels, and if it's 5.1 or 7.1, it will receive those accordingly. Your receiver then is free to apply any processing that you find suitable. Without it, either you need to change manually the number of channels/sampling rate, or your receiver will always be receiving the sampling rate/channels that Windows is sending. This is particularly helpful with 5.1 sources in 7.1 setups, since many programs will send the surrounds in 5.1 content to the back surrounds in 7.1 setups (you want them in the side surrounds).

So anyway, if the programs can't see this HDMI device, then they can't use WASAPI with it and control it. It was a bit inaccurate for me to say that WASAPI didn't work, because it works IF you set your sampling rate and channels manually, but the bigger benefits of WASAPI (for me at least) is that it's supposed to do it automatically!

I don't believe in most of the bitstreaming or the "high-res" stuff about audio so the reason I wanted bitstreaming was just to avoid having to decode bluray in the PC since TMT and PowerDVD always have trouble doing that. But I didn't want it at the cost of sacrificing convenience with pretty much ALL other programs!

 

[andy o]

Hmm seems the HDAV is compatible with ASIO, I'll see what happens there...

 

[SamuriHL]

andy_o, I'll be home tomorrow. I can answer a bunch of the issues you're having. Or, seemingly having. You really need to play in the Xonar control panel, *NOT* the vista control panel. Vista CP doesn't do jack with this card.

 

[spcav]

Forgive if I am missing something here but wasapi support is exclusivelly related to HDMI?

A PC audio device without HDMI (ex most pc audio cards) cannot support wasapi at any case?

Although I have not read enough regarding wasapi, I was under the impression that this was a matter of driver and not exclusively hdmi support.

 

[James]

Forgive if I am missing something here but wasapi support is exclusivelly related to HDMI?

A PC audio device without HDMI (ex most pc audio cards) cannot support wasapi at any case?

No. Wasapi is just a programming interface available since Windows Vista. It works with every soundcard.

 

[davinleeds]

I don't believe in most of the bitstreaming or the "high-res" stuff about audio so the reason I wanted bitstreaming was just to avoid having to decode bluray in the PC since TMT and PowerDVD always have trouble doing that. But I didn't want it at the cost of sacrificing convenience with pretty much ALL other programs!

andy o,

The Xonar bitstreams the audio to the AVR to have it decoded there. If you want to add additional "stuff", that's what you get. "Passthrough" to AVR is the only unaffected feed. Anything else is touched by windows audio mixer and "affected", even in convenience.

 

[spcav]

Anything else is touched by windows audio mixer and "affected", even in convenience.

ReClock is the solution here.

But the problem remains at the decoders of PDVD / TMT (no MA support, downsampling etc).