Help! Can't Get Digital Passthrough For DD,DTS? (1 Viewer)

[Dalton]

Hi,
I need some help. I just built my first HTPC and everything came out fine except I can't get my soundcard to pass DD or DTS to my receiver. I only have my sound hooked up through the versijack(does spdif) via a mini phono to phono plug to my receiver. I get analog sound fine but no digital passthrough. I set my soundcard(Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) to digital output and also set my DVD software to digital output but still no dice. Anybody got any ideas? It has to be some setting i am missing right? Thanks for any help!

 

[Angelo.M]

I'd speak with the Turtle Beach folks, because I think you're using the wrong type of cord/connection from your card to your receiver.

 

[Dalton]

Problem solved. It seems that unlike Soundblaster the TB card needs a 1/8" to stereo rca adapter instead of the mono i was using. All is well now. Thanks Angelo.

 

[Angelo.M]

You're welcome.

How is your rig set-up? Are you happy with it?

I don't run a HTPC, but I do run a PC Music Server in my home office. Dell Dimension --> Chaintech 710 (Envy 24 Chipset) --> Analog output --> harman/kardon PA2000 2-channel amp, bridged to 100 W x 2 --> JBL S28IIs. I usually use Winamp or iTunes for playback. Sounds terrific.

 

[Dalton]

Angelo,
My HTPC is set up is:

Asus P4P-800 VM Micro Atx Motherboard
Pentium 4E 2.8GHZ w/1MB Cache
1GB PC3200 Ram
Seagate 160GB HD w/8MB cache
ATI 128MB Radeon 9500pro
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card
Samsung 16x DVD-Rom(very quiet)
Coolermaster Desktop case (looks very "audiophile")
BenQ PB6200 Projector
WinDVD 5.1 Gold
Power DVD XP
Zoomplayer

Runs very good and is quite fast. In regards to the DD/DTS passthrough I got it working with the PowerDVD but the WinDVD still won't work. I can't figure it out because i believe it is setup properly. I am seriously considering getting TheaterTek software for DVD's because it seems to be the best one for ease of use. I just wish i could figure out the sound problem with WinDVD. BTW, I have this HTPC hooked up to my home network with cable internet access. I love being able to grab files i have stored on my regular PC and play them through the HTPC. I have 1000's of audio/video files at my fingertips. Love listening/watching everything through my PJ/surround sound setup.

Dalton

 

[JeffHayes]

OK guys,

I figured I'd try over here since no one on AVS seems to have a solution to this issue over there.

I am running PowerDVD 5.0 through an M-Audio Delta 66 audio card vai the S/PDIF output on the card into my B&K AVR507 receiver. It is quite obvious that what is coming out of the S/PDIF output from the M-Audio card is not the unaltered DTS/DD/whatever bitstream that is read off the DVD. My receiver (like most these days) displays what type of signal is detected per a given input. Regardless of what audio track I pick from a given DVD via PowerDVD, the display on my receiver does not change.

I currently have WinXP setup to use the M-Audio card for sound playback. I have selected S/PDIF in the audio tab for PowerDVD "configuration". Is there something else I need to do from a PowerDVD setup standpoint to get a true passthrough working? I'm obviously missing something. I emailed Tech Support over at Cyberlink about a week ago about this issue, but still no reply.

Thanks for any help you can throw my way!

Regs,
Jeff

 

[Ken Chan]

Are you sure that PowerDVD recognizes and supports the audio card? (I didn't see it on the hardware list.) If not, then it's just downmixing to stereo, and outputting that to Windows, which uses the optical out, just like any plain Windows sound.

 

[JeffHayes]

That could very well be the issue. Is there a way to get around this "feature"? I will have to check that again and see if the config is recognizing it at all. Are there any particular ways to go about having PowerDVD try to recognize it manually?

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[JeffHayes]

DOH! Just read the rest of your replies in the other thread. So basically I'm SOL if PowerDVD fails to recognize the card. Nice. What a worthless pile of crap. Guess it's time to move to Theater Tek or something a little more robust. You would think that after 5 releases of this product they could make it work with more than a tiny handful of cards they list on their site.

Thanks again,
Jeff