Help sought with HDMI Dolby surround issue

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Rikkitic

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#185669 1-Dec-2015 11:38

I am having major hassles getting my streaming computer to work with Dolby surround sound via HDMI. I have spent a lot of time on this and I have carefully gone through all the fixes. I have verified that the TV (Sony KDL-50W670A) is correctly set up and working. When I replace the streaming PC with my laptop, everything works as it should.

The streaming PC is a Pipo X7 mini-pc. While fiddling with playback tests, I discovered that I can get 5.1 sound from MPC-HC by changing the audio filter to LAV. I can't find any setting that makes it work in VLC. I also can't get it to work while streaming with my browser.

All of this is somewhat over my head. I have some general understanding of codecs and the like, but I don't really know what is going on here. Any tips would be much appreciated. Why is it so difficult to get this to work?

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xcubed

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#1438528 1-Dec-2015 13:16

Digital audio outputs are kinda funky, as there are many different codecs that can be used, and no way for the device to negotiate what formats it supports, so the computer usually tries to be safe and just output stereo by default.

A couple of things you can check:

Right-click the Volume Control icon by the clock on the taskbar, choose Playback devices, then select your HDMI output in the list. If the Configure button is enabled for that device (it may not be), click it and make sure you choose the right speaker layout (it will default to Stereo). Otherwise, click the Properties button and go to the Supported Formats tab. Ensure that all the formats supported by your receiver are checked.
See if you can get audio working in pass-through mode. In this mode, the application makes no attempt to decode the audio track, and just sends it directly to the output. See http://nishilg.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/how-to-force-vlc-to-use-spdif.html

Pretty much anything you see that applies to S/PDIF will also apply to an HDMI connection, as they're treated the same way by the sound drivers.

Athlonite

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#1438586 1-Dec-2015 13:54

I think you might be looking at trying to push the proverbial up hill

Rikkitic

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#1438760 1-Dec-2015 17:35

xcubed: Digital audio outputs are kinda funky, as there are many different codecs that can be used, and no way for the device to negotiate what formats it supports, so the computer usually tries to be safe and just output stereo by default.

A couple of things you can check:

Right-click the Volume Control icon by the clock on the taskbar, choose Playback devices, then select your HDMI output in the list. If the Configure button is enabled for that device (it may not be), click it and make sure you choose the right speaker layout (it will default to Stereo). Otherwise, click the Properties button and go to the Supported Formats tab. Ensure that all the formats supported by your receiver are checked.
See if you can get audio working in pass-through mode. In this mode, the application makes no attempt to decode the audio track, and just sends it directly to the output. See http://nishilg.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/how-to-force-vlc-to-use-spdif.html
Pretty much anything you see that applies to S/PDIF will also apply to an HDMI connection, as they're treated the same way by the sound drivers.

Thanks for the help. VLC now works with 5.1 files but the @#@#$ computer still won't stream. When I check playback properties, supported formats says I have HDMI and it even shows 6 audio jacks (which don't exist) but it still insists I only have two stereo channels and there is no way to change that. Is this the hardware or just more Windows crap? Whatever it is, it sure gets tiresome.

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ZollyMonsta

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#1438801 1-Dec-2015 18:45

It's probably the Pipo. I have one and although not used for streaming it has some 'issues'

Just today it decided to completely disable its Ethernet port for no reason.
Also, recently had to roll back from Windows 10 back to Windows 8.1 as the PiPo seemed to be less than happy (causing an app to fail with a 'division by zero' error (which hasn't happened since rolling back).

I can see in the error logs in event viewer also that they appear to be throttling the CPU for some reason.. Maybe to keep heat down?

Anyway, I'm going off topic. My fair guess says it's the Pipo and an undocumented 'feature'.

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Rikkitic

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#1438803 1-Dec-2015 18:55

The Pipo turns out to be very badly designed and throttling from overheating is part of that. Every single unit has to be modified with heat sinks if you want it to do anything other than be a paperweight and I finally also had to add a fan just to get it to function properly under load.

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