Issues using S/PDIF

[JonnyCam]

Soundmax.exe does not exist on my system anywhere. And I'm not sure why it would - the drivers for my (onboard) soundcard are Realtek?!?!

Try soundman.exe (as in sound manager)
I have realtek and I have a blue icon with yellow concentric circles /sound waves in it in the sys tray - but this was after installing realtek drivers, not the MSI ones which came with the m/b.

Cheers

[nchamp]

are you sure you are looking in the right place

Well, I thought I was...

mpeg audio decoder is where it should show

Ah. that's not what serafis said - he said that that the Audio codec should be set to FFDShow.

once selected and you playback mpeg it should show as icon in task bar
are you not getting this happening

Ah, ok, trying that, I am now! But, the bad news is that I'm getting exactly the same symptoms as under WMP11 - as soon as I turn on SPDIF, the av amp says it's getting digital input, but no sound comes out. When I turn it off, the amp goes back to stereo, but at least I can hear the sound.

[stustunz]

the audio decoder can either be ffdshow or ac3 decoder then the icon should show up for the one you have selected
ac3 decoder only does audio
ffdshow can do after processing of video aswell (but i think that means you cant use hardware decoding in my opinion this is not ideal)
im sure you have to do something under the properties of your sound card so set as per instructions earlier then adjust the hardware setting for your sound card something like only use spdif or pass through
one other thing sometimes the setting dont take affect till you restart what ever you are playing (ie stop playing and start again no need to close app)

if you cannot find what jonnycam was talking about you may need to download a new driver for yous ound card and install it your driver may be out dated or the wrong or not installed at all This is important to getting it going properly

[nchamp]

Try soundman.exe (as in sound manager)
I have realtek and I have a blue icon with yellow concentric circles /sound waves in it in the sys tray - but this was after installing realtek drivers, not the MSI ones which came with the m/b.
Cheers

Yeah, I have that too. Right clicking gives runs the 'sound effect' utility that doesn't do anything, and certainly doesn't give access to anything related to SPDIF.

[nchamp]

im sure you have to do something under the properties of your sound card so set as per instructions earlier then adjust the hardware setting for your sound card something like only use spdif or pass through

This seems to be the issue - I can't find anything that gives any real control of the sound card. I've downloaded the latest drivers from Realtek.

[stustunz]

do you get a s/pdif option at all ?

[nchamp]

do you get a s/pdif option at all ?

Not on anything that is hardware related.

[stustunz]

what about if you go to control panel is there any sound effect manager?

[nchamp]

what about if you go to control panel is there any sound effect manager?

Oh sure - I think I already mentioned that. But it doesn't do anything useful. It has a tab about SPDIF, but that's about SPDIF *in*, not out, and there's no way to set pass thru, or enable spdif out. It just has useless stuff about setting room effects, and equalization.

[stustunz]

ok thats cool
if you play a dvd inwindows media player with ac3 filter do you get surround sound(ac3)