5.1/spdif/optical connection and all I get is stereo in games

[Fred_Vie]

hey there,

I have a Realtek onboard and its connected via optical cable to my soundsystem that supports DTS-Interactive 5.1 and Dolby Digital Live 5.1 but that doesnt seem to do much except for movies. In games I get stereo. If I use stereo I at least have left/right/center but also no rear.

Is that normal because games dont support DTS/DDL or do I need another soundcard?

OS Win10, drivers from https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/forums/audio-video-home-theater.76/post-thread

 

[FreedomEclipse]

What games do you play and do you have a full 5.1 setup?

 

[Fred_Vie]

Anthem, Battlefield 5, Black Desert Online, Apex, SW-tor. Anthem doesnt show any DTS/DDL logo, the rest I gotta check.

Yea I have a 5.1 soundsystem and (you didnt ask it yet but..) yes the games are set to 5.1, else my question would be rather stupid. My soundsystem can decode DTS and DDL thus I dont even need a software for it to work.

I tried DTS and DDL alone and even together with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Home Theater. Alternately ofc. All I got was stereo.

The only way I get a crap 5.1 is on stereo in the Realtek settings + Dolby Atmos (or Dolby Home Theater) but all that dolby does is copy sound from the front to the back. If someone shoots/runs/talks behind me its still louder in front which kinda defeats the purpose of a 5.1 system.

Just I cant use the analog output because both of my sound systems have one broken channel. Only on my older creative 5.1 system - even though the analog input has one broken channel - the optical+spdif connections are still working at 5.1. I tested it with 3 different soundcards now. 5.1 works flawlessly with movies and thats the only 5.1 I get on the spdif out until now.

Last time I was confronted with that issue was 20 years ago and afair back then Creative was the only soundcard producer who could even manage with an analog 5.1. Since then I got out of touch with that topic. I kinda assumed that 20 years later this shouldnt be an issue anymore... Guess I was wrong but I still hope I wasnt.

 

[hat]

@Mussels

Digital PC audio is tricky. I have a suspicion you are getting 5.1 from movies because they audio track is already DTS encoded. Your onboard audio would have no trouble passing along something that already exists in DTS format to your receiver, which naturally, is able to decode it properly and give you true 5.1 audio... however, for games, you need something that can transcode the raw audio into DTS on the fly. Your Realtek probably isn't doing that, which is why you are left with stereo. If you want working 5.1 audio in games, you're probably going to have to buy a sound card which can handle transcoding into DTS. I don't know which ones might have such a feature.

Another way to go about it is to use HDMI, but it's arguably even worse than optical. You have to have a receiver which supports the video resolution you want to use. 1080p60 shouldn't be a problem, but if you are going beyond 60hz or 1080p, you're going to need a recent receiver with the appropriate HDMI level that will handle it. That said, if I'm not mistaken, HDMI should be able to handle whatever uncompressed audio you want, so you can do 5.1 or even 7.1 or higher without worrying about support for codecs like DTS.

 

[Fred_Vie]

@hat If you want working 5.1 audio in games, you're probably going to have to buy a sound card which can handle transcoding into DTS.

I feared as much. If there is even such a card... Guess I have to read up on soundcard tests.

@hat I don't know which ones might have such a feature.

If there is one I hope someone here can suggest some from experience.

@hat . You have to have a receiver which supports the video resolution you want to use.

Yea I cant have a receiver because they always include radio and I dont want to pay the monthly fee for having a device that can receive radio even though I dont listen. Also I'm planning to get a monitor with a higher resolution than 1080p and also a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz. And I dont even want to know what the input delay will be if I would have to connect the receiver first and go from that one to my monitor (if that works that way rather than with one connection to the monitor and the other to the receiver).

 

[hat]

That's why I tagged @Mussels in the post above... he's the first one I think of when the subject of PC audio comes up.

You have to pay a monthly fee if you own something that can receive radio signals? That sounds absurd! Where do you live? That's right up there with the French TV Tax I recently heard of... Well, it may be a moot point, but I wouldn't think there would be any input delay... there is also supposedly a possibility of running one HDMI (or DVI, DisplayPort, whatever) to your monitor, and another to the HDMI, but the PC will see it as another monitor...

Anyways, it sounds like the best solution for you (and most people) would be to find a sound card that can do DTS compression on the fly. I'm not sure which ones do that...

 

[Jetster]

Optical can only handle compressed 5.1 or stereo

 

[CityCultivator]

As you have just posted on a mod driver thread, I assume that you tried that.
Games themselves will usually not show any DDL/DTSi signs. They can report that a 5.1 out is being done. Games do not encode to DDL/DTSi by themselves.
It seems that you need only DTSinteractive; thus I would recommend you to use APO Driver
Home page: PureSoftApps: APO Driver
Support thread: Making Audio Enhancers Work on Windows
Download link: https://waa.ai/apodriver
Install stock drivers for your hardware first.
Install APO driver with option DTS Connect APO.
Open start menu->APO driver->FX Configurator
Select the digital out from the top drop-down selection.
Click Product Config Tool.
Apply DTS Connect.
DTS option is now in audio device advanced properties.
Note: Any encoding solution introduces latency and use CPU cycles. I do not recommend using that for games.

 

[hat]

I'm not sure what CPU he has, but whatever load introduced from encoding DTS should be minimal... especially if he has a >4 core processor. Unlike video, audio is not hard to encode.

 

[Shambles1980]

afaia spdif is really only stereo anyway

 

[CityCultivator]

I'm not sure what CPU he has, but whatever load introduced from encoding DTS should be minimal... especially if he has a >4 core processor. Unlike video, audio is not hard to encode.

The load will be minimal, but it will be there. Using any native method will have no load.
Latency on the other hand in unremovable.

 

[hat]

The load will be minimal, but it will be there. Using any native method will have no load.
Latency on the other hand in unremovable.

I wouldn't think the additional latency would matter much in practice, but you have a valid point. What happens if you have a sound card that does it though, instead of modded drivers that adds the capability by making the CPU do it?

 

[bottlefedc83]

I'm not sure what CPU he has, but whatever load introduced from encoding DTS should be minimal... especially if he has a >4 core processor. Unlike video, audio is not hard to encode.

I tried to tell you in the other post, you might have to have someone explain how to do It specifically, I'm not the best with walkthrough type stuff. The gyst is the Realtek enhancements throw it into HP mode, or it has been the culprit for me most of the time in the situation that you are describing. Easiest way to test and see if that is what is happening is put your endpoint on whatever 5.1 you have set up, DDL or DTSi, play a test tone to make sure windows grabs it, then head over and disable all enhancements. Then go test and see if you have 5.1 instead of just the two front. If you do I know how to fix it, if not I'm not sure.

I wouldn't think the additional latency would matter much in practice, but you have a valid point. What happens if you have a sound card that does it though, instead of modded drivers that adds the capability by making the CPU do it?

Sorry didn't mean to quote this.

I feared as much. If there is even such a card... Guess I have to read up on soundcard tests.


If there is one I hope someone here can suggest some from experience.


Yea I cant have a receiver because they always include radio and I dont want to pay the monthly fee for having a device that can receive radio even though I dont listen. Also I'm planning to get a monitor with a higher resolution than 1080p and also a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz. And I dont even want to know what the input delay will be if I would have to connect the receiver first and go from that one to my monitor (if that works that way rather than with one connection to the monitor and the other to the receiver).

I meant my last post to quote you, the OP.

 

[CityCultivator]

I wouldn't think the additional latency would matter much in practice, but you have a valid point. What happens if you have a sound card that does it though, instead of modded drivers that adds the capability by making the CPU do it?

Latency is in the format. DTSi has less latency than DDL, but both have a fixed latency that is unremovable using any hardware in the world.

 

[Fred_Vie]

Home page: PureSoftApps: APO Driver

I read up on it yesterday and tried to download whats needed but after the first download already the site kept bothering me to get premium for multiple downloads even though I just tried to down them one after another thus I cba anymore about this site. That even happend using a different browser. Seems like they make theyr money with that webhoster they link everything to. Maybe I try again later but I doubt it... too many packs to download and too many steps. I´d rather just get a soundcard that can do it instead.

My new cpu... as well as my previous one, rarely goes above 20 % cpu load. I doubt that there will be something that needs the 80 % in the near future. The old i7-2700k was mostly running at around 10 % load playing games. Makes me wonder why I bothered to upgrade. It's actually weird that the new one is under more load with the same games I played on the old cpu already at an average of 10 % load

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Do your speakers have analog 3.5mm in? If they do, changing over to them would be the fastest/easiest solution. Optical is only suitable for stereo.

Just I cant use the analog output because both of my sound systems have one broken channel.

Tell me more.


Movies work fine because MPEG2 by default used Dolby encoding on the disk to pack 5.1 audio channels into DVD5/DVD9 space. Dolby in the computer space is virtually nonexistent.

 

[CityCultivator]

I read up on it yesterday and tried to download whats needed but after the first download already the site kept bothering me to get premium for multiple downloads even though I just tried to down them one after another thus I cba anymore about this site. That even happend using a different browser. Seems like they make theyr money with that webhoster they link everything to. Maybe I try again later but I doubt it... too many packs to download and too many steps. I´d rather just get a soundcard that can do it instead.

My new cpu... as well as my previous one, rarely goes above 20 % cpu load. I doubt that there will be something that needs the 80 % in the near future. The old i7-2700k was mostly running at around 10 % load playing games. Makes me wonder why I bothered to upgrade. It's actually weird that the new one is under more load with the same games I played on the old cpu already at an average of 10 % load

You need only this file.

 

[Fred_Vie]

You have to pay a monthly fee if you own something that can receive radio signals? That sounds absurd! Where do you live? That's right up there with the French TV Tax I recently heard of.

Seems many countries in Europe got that. They tied it to "our right to get news" (even if those news are just half baked lies) and charge us for state TV/Radio. Now since people started objecting to that by not using those devices anymore they are inventing new rules every other year to force those who dont pay to join into the ripoff. Since the state tv/radio stations still want our money they made it a tax in Germany too and that will probably happen in my country too. Didnt yet but corporations get theyr way sooner or later. There is nothing nicer than having a fixed income that the payer cant object too. You can waste the money you get and just increase the fee/tax. Same old.. same old...

Anyways, it sounds like the best solution for you (and most people) would be to find a sound card that can do DTS compression on the fly.

Indeed.

You need only this file.

Thank you. I meant I was interested in other gui's that needed more downloads.

 

[CityCultivator]

Thank you. I meant I was interested in other gui's that needed more downloads.

Mediafire requires premium if you want to download multiple files as a group. It does not require payment if you manually download each file individually.

 

[Fred_Vie]

Do your speakers have analog 3.5mm in? If they do, changing over to them would be the fastest/easiest solution.

Like I said, the analog in is broken on 2 systems. One doesnt have base one doesnt have the right box. 5.1 just works on the opptical in (spdif). My newer 5.1 system has just analog inputs but I would have to send it to Germany to repair it and I cba because they rip off ppl by selling flawed electronics to make them replace the whole print every 5 years.

Optical is only suitable for stereo.

Thats maybe true for music and gaming (if games dont support it) but not for movies since they support both DTS and DDL is 5.1+. Although I never understood why DTS and DDL are too stupid to use all boxes on a 5.1 system when playing music (on PC's anyways, never had a 5.1 receiver to compare it to).

Movies work fine because MPEG2 by default used Dolby encoding on the disk to pack 5.1 audio channels into DVD5/DVD9 space. Dolby in the computer space is virtually nonexistent.

I believe we are way past mpeg2 with mp4 and mkv.
Movies work just fine on my optical connection but not the via the analog connection.
I'm not surprised that Dolby is rare on PC/in games because it's no real surround. Thats why I'm not satisfied with Dolby because the sound comes from the wrong side (mostly from all sides). I wasnt interested in Dolby but in 5.1 surround.

Mediafire requires premium if you want to download multiple files as a group. It does not require payment if you manually download each file individually.

Indeed thats what it is saying. But I tried it individually and it refused even using a new link in a different browser.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Like I said, the analog in is broken on 2 systems. One doesnt have base one doesnt have the right box.

Can you detail these systems? "Base" and "right box?"

My newer 5.1 system has just analog inputs but I would have to send it to Germany to repair it...

So there's three systems? Repair it?

Although I never understood why DTS and DDL are too stupid to use all boxes on a 5.1 system when playing music (on PC's anyways, never had a 5.1 receiver to compare it to).

Because they are encoding types. Music -> 5.1 requires upmixing which is out of the scope of Dolby media encoding. If you're using SP/DIF, the computer has to upmix the signal then compress it using Dolby algorithms before sending it out of the optical. Hence the problem: Dolby wants money and most motherboard manufacturers are unwilling to pay so integrated SP/DIF is effectively stereo-only.

I believe we are way past mpeg2 with mp4 and mkv.

Those are container files. AAC have been used for virtually all production media since DVD spec debuted. AC-3 is Dolby. Discs can have both (AAC for stereo, AC-3 for 5.1).

 

[Fred_Vie]

So there's three systems? Repair it?

Still two. I had my newer one checked in a repair shop but they couldnt repair it and the producer refused to send over the broken electronic print insisting to send the sub to him (which is a joke it's 10 kg for the sub and like 0,5 kg for a print and 2 ways vs 1 way). The creative system is prolly 20+ years old, I doubt someone would repair it and I wouldnt know where to start. Also repairs nowadays are almost as expensive as buying new. Thanks to our throwaway society. I have not looked into a new system yet.

Because they are encoding types. Music -> 5.1 requires upmixing which is out of the scope of Dolby media encoding. If you're using SP/DIF, the computer has to upmix the signal then compress it using Dolby algorithms before sending it out of the optical.

Right! Now I remember that I had an addon on winamp that did exactly that when I tried the optical connection for the first time like 20 years ago. One could adress all boxes and one had stereo x2 + base.

 

[bottlefedc83]

I have had DDL or DTSi working on every system I have had since 2011. They date back to the original xbox and sandstorm in DDL case...so hardware support is there for most users. Licensing and money got in the way as always so vendors clipped it. I have never had problems with latency, unless the apo was causing it, and I have never had a problem with up mixing for 2 channel content. This is across multiple platforms from different vendors etc.

I tried to present a way to possibly fix this issue you seem to have, you never reported back with anything so I assume you figured it out.

 

[Fred_Vie]

It seems that you need only DTSinteractive; thus I would recommend you to use APO Driver

I did it and DTS connect is not in the advanced list. I ran it again, still not there, restarted, still not there.
DTS Audio is under "supported formats" but it was there before.

I ran the problem fixing codes in cmd, it asked for directplay to be installed, I installed it, DTS is still not in the advanced list.

What I dont get at all is that the advanced list has no 5.1 setting nor does the Gigabyte gui.

Does "Installation with virtual audio cable" mean an optical connection?

 

[SoNic67]

so hardware support is there for most users

Just because you had it, does not mean that everyone else has it.
The reality is that 90% of the audio setups don't have either of those two (DD Live, DTS Connect) because licensing costs associated. Although there is no "special" hardware, only specifically configured drivers, sometimes the audio chip has a different notation (internal configured), just to signal the drivers that it's licensing fee was paid.
Also the processing overhead and latency for encoding the sound in either of those two systems in not always acceptable.

A simple test is to enable the "ding" sound in Windows. Most of the encoding drivers are not able to keep the DD or DTS connection "on" while PC is silent. When that "ding" happens, it trigggers the conversion and sends the signal to receiver. By the time that receiver starts decoding, the PC sound stops and you hear... nothing. The whole chain latency needs to be considered.

That's why an analogic 5.1 connection to any receiver is better for gaming. If the receiver has it.