I'll try and clear the issue regarding Dolby Digital Live/DTS not playing in Windows 10 a little. As best I can. Basically it was broken for a long time, until either the first or second stable Windows 10 build. 10240, or 10568. Can't remember. I think there was an insider build here and there that worked with the 'workaround', but it was pretty much broken. Once the stable builds came out you still had to use the workaround, as I do to this day. Unless you happen to have got lucky with your M/B. I had ZERO problems with any version of windows 10 with my previous 1st gen Core i7 Gigabyte M/B (ALC889). Dolby Digital and DTS even showed up in the Realtek Manager. Then I fried my M/B and ended up with an 1150 board like many of you. Then came problems. Having said that, it's been pretty good for a long time (so long as you inject RltkAPO64.dll from the 2.75 drivers as instructed elsewhere here. AFAIK the A1 method no longer works (patcher). This is all regarding DDL and DTS btw. I have no knowledge of Dolby home theater. It's Pro Logic stuff my receiver can do and is a manipulation of an analog signal. I guess you headphone guys use it a lot. The big issue with windows 10 was DDL/DTS. Until today it was still all good until I went to the latest Build 14986. 'Format not supported by the device'. Haven't seen that for many months. I re-installed realtek, no good. Gonna roll back now. Fingers crossed.
Hope that informed some of you.
I can confirm that Windows 10 Insider Build 14986 broke DDL/DTS. I just rolled back and everything is fine again. I'm still using R2.79 with the modified 2.75 RltkAPO64.dll file. Simply unpack R2.79, and copy the dll into the Vista64 folder, replacing the R2.79 dll. No need to mod the registry for unsigned drivers if you're on Windows 10. At least the Insider builds anyway. Windows allows you to install it after a warning. I haven't tried doing the same with the new R2.80 driver. There wont be anything special in there that I can think of, and if it aint broke....
Edit : Dolby Home Theater is also available, but only for my digital outputs. Not sure if that's how it's meant to be. In hindsight, I remember always seeing it there.
Does anyone have problem with Dolby Digital lost signal? That happens a lot to me when gaming. When the game changes map there is no audio signal, then I enter the game my receiver still shows no signal. Sometime my receiver will freeze and shuts off. It doesn't happen with dts. My receiver is Logitech Z5500 which supports both DDL and DTS. My motherboard supports Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec. I just replaced my optical cable recently.
Same. The Z5500 doesn't seem to like silence with DDL. If I forget to switch back to 2 channel PCM when listening to music it will shut off during the silence between songs. Sometimes it will go for a few hours without turning off, but that's rare. Not sure if there's a fix. Try this thread -
http://www.overclock.net/t/568999/a...acklight-of-logitech-z-5500-d-control-pod/120. It's mostly about the hardware, but the many of them know exactly how the Z5500 works.
Dolby and DTS, use some 'magic' to send 5.1 channels over the same cable, and then your receiver decodes the 'magic' and sends the sound to your 5.1 speakers, which are connected to the receiver.
Your receiver would be one of these:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dolby+receiver
If you have a surround-sound 5.1 channel speaker system that can plug directly into the 6 sockets on your motherboard, you do not need dolby. You already have surround sound
Analog surround over 3 shared inputs. Center/Bass, FL/FR, RL/RR. Not true surround, but pretty decent quality. The latest Dolby/DTS iterations offer 8 high quality discrete lossless digital channels. If you want the best sound quality you do need Dolby/DTS. Or PCM over HDMI. Not gonna get in to that debate though.
S/PDIF can only carry 2 channels. So the 'magic' in DDL/DTS decoding isn't in making the sound any better, that's been done during production. It's in the encoding and decoding. 5 channels need to be compressed and organized in to 2, then transported to the decoder (receiver) to have the process reversed and each channel output to the correct speaker.
I thought it was also worth noting that all this trouble with DDL/DTS playback is about licensing, not hardware or software shortcomings/limitations. Just about every Realtek chip I know of in the last 10+ years is capable of encoding DDL/DTS signals just fine, but few motherboard manufacturers want to pay the exorbitant cost Dolby in particular impose. So ironically, my 7 year old Gen 1 core i7 M/B had it enabled, but not the latest Z170. Reason, my old M/B was top of the line back then. Gigabyte obviously forked out. My current board is mid range, so no official DDL/DTS encoding.