Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mesue]

I had this all working perfectly last summer, but now I am on Windows Vista and MC12 and I can't get it working like I had it before.

I have a wireless outdoor speaker plugged into the rear output jack of my on-board sound card. It is Realtek AC97, updated to the most recent driver. When I test the speaker setup in the RealTek utility and the Windows Sound control panel, I get sound out of the wireless speaker. But in MC12 when I configure a zone to use the rear left & right channels, I still get the sound from my front outputs. What am I missing?

[Matt]

I don't have much advice other than trial and error.  Try WaveOut, DirectSound, and ASIO.  It's possible Vista (or the soundcard driver) is being too smart and mixing the output across all the channels.

[mesue]

I just re-read my original post and don't think this part is clear-- When I use the zone that is configured for rear output channels in MC12, NOTHING comes out of the wireless speaker. I ONLY get sound from the front channel speakers no matter what is set in MC.

It would seem to me that the problem is in MC since the sound does come out the appropriate speakers when I test them with the speaker setup control panels in Windows and the sound card driver.

When I try WaveOut, there is no option to select speaker channels and ASIO is not supported in my hardware. Direct Sound is the only one that allows me to choose output channels.

[Matt]

Make sure you configure Windows so that it knows you have 4 or 6 speakers.  Otherwise, it just converts ANY two channel input to the main lines, even if Media Center flags it for certain speakers.

[mesue]

Make sure you configure Windows so that it knows you have 4 or 6 speakers.  Otherwise, it just converts ANY two channel input to the main lines, even if Media Center flags it for certain speakers.

Like this?


When I click each of the little speakers shown in that screen shot, the test sound comes out the proper speaker.

[mesue]

No new suggestions? I guess I'll have to buy another sound card.

Out of curiosity... Is there anyone out there who has gotten a similar set up to work? One zone routed to rear channel speakers?

[Matt]

It's working for me here on XP.

We'll test Vista as well.  However, MC simply flags the output for certain speakers.  It's up to the device / driver to honor that flagging.

[Mr ChriZ]

I'll test this later.
I've got it working on XP also.

[Mr ChriZ]

Hmm... that didn't work!
Media Center came up with a dialogue box saying it couldn't
play in 5.1 or 4 channels through DirectSound

Windows is definitley seeing the sound card as a surround
card however as it allows me to change the balance on
all  speakers.

The sound card is an HD Sigmatek something or other 7.1 Dell internal jobby.

[mesue]

I found something! Last night I followed the links about Vista's sound enhancements that were posted  in that other thread about which Vista should I buy. It got me wondering if this was the cause of the different behavior for zones, so I started poking around. Here's a link to the article that talks about the enhancements: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/articles/450038.aspx

I went to sound control panel, clicked Speakers, then properties, then the "Enhancements" tab, and I found that Speaker Fill was the only enhancement enabled by default. I tried disabling speaker fill, but it made no difference with MC12. Then I tried checking the box "Disable all sound effects" and ta-da! It is working just like I had it last year where the zone set to rear output only comes out the rear speaker.

Some of those enhancements sound like they could be useful, so it is too bad they have to be completely disabled in order to get this working. Hopefully, J River can look into this more and figure out a way to make it co-exist.