Hey Barleyman,
It seems we should somehow start filling in the FAQ to add to what Alan already did himself in the initial post
ASIO driver is only useful if you're going to play some MIDI instruments and process them in the realtime, otherwise there's no real value in using it over other output methods.
For me DTS was working with all releases (my AVR shows PCM 6 channels), given that there's some interim software that does the processing of your input sources to perform a speaker fill.
When I started with Alan's drivers, it was either Nahimic or Creative version per version, whichever was able to start and not whine about hardware not found
Over time I switched to APO and upmixing equalisers to get rid of that dependency on specific vendor-bound software. This way Windows always presents its audio endpoint as 5.1-capable no matter what's the input, and conversion is seamless so it only works when there are less than 5.1 channels in the input source.
Hope it clarifies.
Yes, I saw that comment about ASIO mentioned twice or so when I went back some 500 messages to find this:
alexrainmk Try to separately install the package that is in the attached file. Dolby Atmos Speaker System Dolby Atmos Speaker System for Gaming Please support :)
www.techpowerup.com
Which details on how to make 8996.1 to present DTS as a default format instead of DD.
Do I have to have Realtek driver installed 1st if I don't install ASIO? Some specific version?
As for APO, I see it mentioned quite a bit.. I thought it's part of Alan's driver pack already? I don't really want to upmix things, but if that makes 5.1 audio appear as default in games I guess I'm fine with it.
I'll experiment a bit more, picking up on that 8996 bit was the key here to not waste (even more) time trying one version after the other, God knows I spent all night initially.
And in case anyone wonders why I'm doing this - I bought expensive fancy LG OLED55CX tv that has all kinds of modern tomfoolery in the HDMI department. G-sync/Freesync/VRR, HDR10, 4k120Hz etc. All that just makes my otherwise perfectly good home theatre amplifier faint outright and in fact av receivers which support all that stuff are only coming out now and e.g. Yamaha says they'll add those features in "future firmware updates". So you're stuck with HDMI ARC to get audio back from the TV to the amplifier and this does not work very well, in fact LG is pretty pathetic when it comes to audio outputs or what it's able to do with them. Again, if you bought your av receiver withing a 1-3 years time, you
might have eARC that supports pretty much the normal HDMI audio formats so you could tell LG to do passthrough and not think about it.
So while the TV is a big upgrade on visuals, it's also a big downgrade on my audio setup. At least this way I can keep a decent DTS 5.1 experience over TOS, entirely bypassing problems on audio processing on the TV. No such luck on satellite box or Roku media player though.. Although both of them have TOS output, there are only that many optical connectors on the av receiver!
HDMI ARC problems are a pretty common topic online..
After some more variations..
Installed 8996.1
Realtek DCH Audio Driver Mods - Alan Finotty's Repository Only for Windows 10 - Starting from Creators Update Visit my profile on: TechPowerUp Support Thread This mod package contains: Realtek ...
github.com
- Pick bus driver option (works either way)
- Pick Realtek HDA control panel
- Optional: Creative extras, Dolby Atmos, A-volute stuff (Not really needed for 5.1 setup but can be useful for headphones or 2-speaker system)
- Do not pick ASIO (If you need ASIO, you probably know it e.g. musicians)
- Reboot
DTS works after applying the realtek device tweak
- Click on Realtek Audio device tweak icon on desktop
- Open customized tab
- Tick customised box
- set 0 to all six vid/sid/did boxes
- Click save
- Reboot
Creative 720 only has 2-speaker mode available. Meh.
Now that I think about it, it's been a while since I dealt with Dolby Digital or DTS, it's always in 5.1 format and it's the job of the amplifier to downsample it if you don't have full speaker setup. So at least in theory windows should be aware that there's 5.1 speaker output available.
You don't have to have the Realtek HD audio manager at all to set the DTS interactive (or Dolby Digital live), you can do this from windows sound settings but it's a bit harder to find the right place that way.
For HDA manager, from the classic control panel:
- Click on windows button and type con, pick control panel
- Pick hardware + sound
- Pick realtek HD Audio manager
- Open S/PDIF optical output tab
- Click on set default device button
- Open default format tab
- Click on dts interactive button or pick it from the drop-down menu
- Voilà, at least as far as getting DTS encoding working goes.
I'll check some more combinations of that. It seems the bus driver option does nothing. Picking the "fancy" realtek control panel makes the icon appear in bottom right status box but I don't like having useless stuff there. YMMV. I'll also see if the A-volute audio degrader allows setting speaker setup but I suspect it's only for analog outputs.
After some more variations..
Installed 8996.1
Realtek DCH Audio Driver Mods - Alan Finotty's Repository Only for Windows 10 - Starting from Creators Update Visit my profile on: TechPowerUp Support Thread This mod package contains: Realtek ...
github.com
- pick bus driver option
- Pick Realtek HDA
- Do not pick anything else (Asio, Dolby Atmos, A-volute, creative stuff)
- Reboot
DTS works after applying the realtek device tweak
- Click on Realtek Audio device tweak icon on desktop
- Open customized tab
- Tick customised box
- set 0 to all six vid/sid/did boxes
- Click save
- Reboot
This seems pretty solid combination. The audio degraders cannot help you make windows think there's 5.1 audio available but you might want those if you want headphone positional audio etc. Only speaker option is "stereo" with S/PDIF, Not much use for my 5.1 home theatre setup. Dolby atmos seems to be some kind of audio "enhancer" that doesn't do spatial audio. Or maybe it does, I didn't pay much attention to it beyond the "we mess with your audio settings on the fly!"-spiel.
Realtek UAD control panel does not lit up the DTS connect even after you change default format to DTS interactive but I'm not sure if it's cosmetic or not. HDA control panel shows DTS connect being active when you set default format to DTS. The HDA panel does make icon appear on the notification area but it disappears after you apply the RT audio device tweak. You can still get the Realtek audio manager from the classic control panel.
Anyways, let's try some games finally besides spending lots and lots of time getting things to work..