Turtle Beach - Riviera 5.1 Sound Card

[jkasch]

I can not seem to get true Dolby® Digital sound from my PC through to my reciever, the reciever only picks up the front channels and I have to use Pro Logic II to simulate Dolby Digital. I am using the Turtle Beach - Riviera 5.1 Sound Card which has a digital S/PDIF output for pass-through of Dolby® Digital. I configure the Turtle Beach driver force S/PDIF and it is working because the reciver in only hooked up the the optical jack, it just is not receiving it in 5.1? Attached are my log files… from the excerpt I think that it is trying to work?

07:37:22.015 VERBOSE playDVD@4
07:37:22.062 VERBOSE playDVD@5.1

I am using the standard skin "Video" directory with daemon tools to mount my .ISO files that are ripped from DVD and placed on a 3 tera-byte server with about 400 movies. I use the Media Gate MG-35 on another TV in the house and it does exactly what is expected, the reciever picks up the AC3 digital signal and sets Dolby Digital. So I know that DVD .ISO files are carrying the AC3 track.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

[sub]

Attached are my log files… from the excerpt I think that it is trying to work?

07:37:22.015 VERBOSE playDVD@4
07:37:22.062 VERBOSE playDVD@5.1

This "5.1" is nothing to do with audio. Its just some debug code so I can trace the execution of the function in the logs.

You'll problem will be something to do with your audio decoders. Only certain audio decoders have the ability to do what you want. There has been a few threads discussing this recently - do a forum search.

[nak]

I had the same problem when setting up my system a few weeks ago. Couldn't get 5.1 audio the S/PDIF, using the same card as you.

It took some messing around with audio decoders/renderers before I got it to work.

I downloaded and installed AC3filter. http://ac3filter.net/ That comes with a config. utility with settings you can change for it. I may have made changes to the default, but can't remember. I can check when I get back home.

It still didn't work until I set the audio renderer to Default WaveOut, or something like that.

With those settings, I get 5.1 out the S/PDIF.

[jkasch]

NAK I would be real interested in the settings you used, I installed AC3FILTER and tried every combination of settings along with the setting in GBPVR for video and rendering (both DVD and LiveTV), after 2 hours I gave up.

[nak]

jkasch, I'm away from home right now, but some time in the next 12 hours or so, I'll post my AC3filter ini file. (or config file, or whatever it is that holds the settings.)

[jkasch]

Perfect and thanks. If you can do a screen shot of the GBPVR "Playback" and "DVD & Remote" tabs then that would be much appreciated too. Thanks again.

[nak]

Here you go. I had thought AC3filter had a nice neat INI file in it's directory where it stored everything, but it didn't, so I made screenshots of the utility instead to show my settings. I'd guess it stores everything in the registry somewhere, but I didn't feel like looking.

Also included a screen shot of the GBPVR playback page showing the audio decoder and renderer. (I don't play DVD's on this machine, so I didn't include a shot of that tab.) Make sure you enable S/PDIF out on the Turtle audio setup page, though I suspect you already have that right since you'd gotten this far.

Those settings, along with using the DirectWave renderer provides me with Dolby Digital 5.1 passed through the S/PDIF in all its glory.

One note: When I do this, it doesn't come out the stereo outs of the soundcard, which I have connected to the TV, it only comes out the S/PDIF. So, since my wife and kids watch more TV than me, and hate to mess with having to turn the receiver on just to watch TV, I usually just use the Cyberlink audio decoder, which enables the stereo outs to the TV, but outputs only PCM out the S/PDIF. So, I only switch to the AC3Filter decoder with WaveOut when I sit down to watch a live or recorded show or game in HD with digital audio.

Of course, when you're trying this if you're watching live or recorded TV, you'll need to make sure the audio is 5.1 digital. I've found, at least around here, that generally only primetime shows or sports are broadcast in 5.1, and all the rest is PCM. (I only do digital over-the-air through a DVICO receiver card.)

Hope this works for you....no guarantees of course.

[jkasch]

Thanks for taking the time to post screen shots of your settings, I will go over them tonight (I am on the East Coast of the USA). Yes I do have 2 speaker and S/PDIF checked on the Turtle Beach Setup utility and I do get sound out of the S/PDIF but it is only PCM.

At first glance it looks like the only changes you made to AC3FILTER is the output to Dolby Sound, from the default 2.1 stereo. My settings are the same as yours here and on the GBPVR screen for audio. I am only using NTSC or standard cable so no 5.1 is used there anyway. But the reciever does pickup the signal as PCM and I can set the reciever to Dolby Pro Logic II and I get simulated 5.1 over the S/PDIF cable. One advantage here is that you can also get Stereo sound out of the card along with S/PDIF at the same time so weather you just use your T.V's stereo inputs or the S/PDIF on the reciever it does not matter, both signals are put out on ths card simultaniously. I do have an ATSC input on the Happaugue DVR-1600 card so I will try it and see if Digital 5.1 comes out like yours.

My real challenge resides in trying to get true Dolby Digital 5.1 audio as pass-through out of the S/PDIF jack when playing a DVD in GBPVR. I rip my DVD's to an .ISO file including the AC3 audio track. Then configure Daemon Tools to mount the DVD .ISO file when it is selected in GBPVR. What I get is stereo PCM output over both the S/PDIF and Green Stereo jack at the same time. I have to set the reciever to use Dolby Pro Logic II and then I get simulated 5.1on the reciever from PCM. The way this should work is AC3 should be passed directly through the card and to the reciever without needing a Filter or Decoder (the Turtle Beach Driver should do this) as the reciever is looking for a raw signal, exactly how a stand alone DVD player works.

AC3FILTER is actually taking a stereo signal and running it through a decoder then re-creating it to pass to the card as AC3 so that sounds that are generated on the PC are converted to a 5.1 signal (or games and the like). In theory the card should just be able to pass the signal out the S/PDIF without the need for AC3FILTER when a actual AC3 signal is sensed, like a HI-Def broadcast that carried 5.1 or the 5.1 audio track on a DVD. AC3FILTER is actually acting as a Dolby Pro-Logic II pre-processor.

Thanks again and I'll let you know how it goes. I think that a card that does DDL like the Turtle Beach Montego negates the need for AC3FILTER as it does the pre-processing..... More to come and thanks again nak, hopefully all this work can help out others on the forum too?