I tried Google pretty thoroughly however I did not manage to find anything relevant.
I tried official "Gigabyte HDMI AudioDriver" downloaded from Gigabyte website which is in-fact Realtek driver 1.97.
I also tried "ATI HDMI Audio Device" version 2.13 and 2.18 (downloaded from Realtek website).
In all 3 cases MC13 behaves the same way:
- Crossfade (on Next) works fine
- Fade out (on Stop) does not work = once I hit Stop button playback still goes on for a while (this "while" is determined by Fadeout settings Fast / Normal / Slow) and then playback stops instantly
- On Pause I get cca 1 second stuttering loop no matter if I check / uncheck the "Flush device buffers" checkbox
I also did want to try the integrated Catalyst HDMI audio drivers (9.4) however I am simply unable to try them at all. Once I uninstall Realtek drivers Vista automatically installs those crappy Microsoft drivers. I managed to prevent Vista from doing this by moving hdaudio INF files from Windows\Inf folder -> then I had "Unknown devices" in Device Manager. I reinstalled Catalyst 9.4 = still "unknown devices". I even uninstalled / install Catalyst = still the same. This is weird because I am unable to find any relevant ATI *.INF files anywhere in my system (I tried to update drivers manually by pointing Vista to specific location however there is no place to go). Nevertheless even if I would be able to make it work (Catalyst) at least that "Silent stream" bug is something that DOES bother me (I did "enjoy" it a lot with NVIDIA). I also read lots of comments on Internet that these Catalyst HDMI audio drivers suck and that the Realtek is much better...