Hi Pete,

Seems like a DTS decoding problem. WMP does not decode, and neither does the RME card. VLC and PowerDVD do the decoding in software. If you route the output to SPDIF, check the "Non-Audio" box for SPDIF out, then connect the SPDIF out to a home theater receiver, it will work as the decoding will be done at the receiver.

I think you'll need this to use WMP DVD playback with the analog outs of the HDSP card: http://ac3filter.net/

Hi,

We are a small specialist system builder here in the UK and have a number of customers using the HDSP9632 along with the Ao4s card to provide analogue 5.1 output. This is mainly for Blu-ray playback via PowerDVD or Arcsoft?s Total Media Theatre 3 for customers that cannot take audio over HDMI. The multi-channel analogue output is an excellent 2nd choice.

For this to work you have to set the main system audio output in Control Panel ? Hardware and Sound ? Manage Audio Devices ? Sound Playback to ?Speakers? RME HDSP ? this works great however it also means that regular DVD playback in Windows Media Player/Windows Media Center is also via analogue multi-channel with the built in Microsoft Dolby decoder providing the multi channel analogue output (note it can?t do this for DTS but that is an accepted constraint).

This has all worked well until now, and we are now seeing the same problem as Pete Kaine has posted with DVD playback in Windows Media Center not decoding to analogue ? you hear white noise from the front two channels ? it?s as if the raw Dolby Digital bitstream is being output via the analogue front channels. 3rd party players like PowerDVD or the Arcsoft player still work fine.

We?ve done some troubleshooting to see what?s changed and it looks like Vista Service Pack 2 is the culprit.

On a test system with an initial build of Vista 32bit Home Premium SP1 and a RME HDSP9632 card with firmware 154 and WDM drivers 3.0.8.1 all works well. As soon as you run through all the Windows updates finishing with SP2 it gets broken.

We?ve tried HDSP9632 cards with firmware 153 and older WDM drivers 3.0.5.6 to 3.0.7.3 and the result is the same.

Incidentally the same problem exists with Windows Media Player/Windows Media Center in Windows 7 build 7100  ? we haven?t tried the final RTM version yet.

Whilst we can advise our customers to hold back from installing Vista Service Pack 2 inevitably this will not always be possible.

Is this something that can be fixed with an updated HDSP driver?

What about Windows 7 ? have you seen this problem?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Phil Hale
Uvem Ltd, UK

Hi Matthias,

Thank you for the quick reply.

As I mentioned before with Vista we can try and stop our customers applying SP2 but with Windows 7 are you saying we will just have to wait for a driver update? If that is the case then we?ll have to look at alternative hardware.

Do you have any other product that will currently work with Vista SP2 and/or Windows 7 and provide 5.1/7.1 analogue output using WMP/Media Center as the DVD player/decoder?

Regards, Phil

Hi RME,

Has there been any progress in resolving this issue?

I can confirm that the latest WDM driver 3.082 made no difference with Windows Vista SP2.

Interestingly I?ve retested with Windows 7, both the RC7100 and the now officially released build 7600, and this now works with driver WDM 3.081 and the latest 3.082, I'm not sure what's changed and why it didn't work before.

Rolling back Windows Vista from SP2 to SP1 also restores things.

Thank you in advance for any update.

Phil

Hi,

Is there any news on when/if an updated driver will fix the problem of WMP/7MC playback of decoded Dolby soundtracks to 6 channel audio with the HDSP9632+AO4S board.

To recap:

With Vista SP2 and all versions of Windows 7 (I?ve tested x86, x64 7HP, 7Ult), playback of a regular DVD video with Dolby soundtrack via analogue output:

In WMP12 you just get noise from the front two channels
In 7MC regardless of opting for 2 speakers or 5.1 speakers in the Speakers setup you only get decoded to 2 speaker output
In Arcsoft TMT DVD playback is fine through all 6 speakers

With Vista SP1 playback is fine  in WMP12 or Media Center ? the update to Vista SP2 broke things and this continues into Windows 7.

I?m guessing that Microsoft updated their internal Dolby Decoder filter (AC3) and this doesn?t work with the RME WDM driver (any version).

This is a major headache for a number of our customers wishing to use Media Center to playback DVD?s via analogue 6 speaker out.

Switching to the motherboard Realtek audio (up to 8 channels analogue) is an option but is clearly inferior to the RME HDSP9632+AO4S combination.

An updated WDM driver to restore things would be greatly appreciated.

Phil

Hi, thanks for the suggestion - I was hoping to hear for an update from RME - I don't fancy tinkering with merits and external filters, much rather have an official solution.

Can you please try driver version 3.083? It solved the problem on our systems.

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/hdsp_wdm_3083.zip