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[shimrod]

I've been searching for a similar post and I haven't found anything, when I play a dvd movie the sound is very distorted, like the frequency is downshifted. My music files play fine, sound great.

I'm using wasapi event style through a HT Omega Claro sound card, spdif to a receiver. Video is set to red october standard. I've played with various settings and haven't improved the dvd audio. I expect it's a simple configuration issue but I'd appreciate any help or suggestions. If I need to supply any other configuration information please let me know what will help, I'm new at this. Thanks.

[shimrod]

Is this forum always so unhelpful?

The problem turned out to be the wasapi event style setting. I changed to direct sound and the distorted dvd playback was gone.

I find it hard to believe I'm the only one who's had this problem, shouldn't this response be discussed in the setup wiki? Does anyone read these?

[JimH]

When nobody replies, it often means nobody knows.  I don't know.  It's a very unusual problem.

What version of MC are you using?  Is it a disc or a ripped DVD?  Does anything else play it?  WMP, for example.

In Tools/Options/Filetypes, check how DVD's are played.

[shimrod]

My movies are ripped to ISOs. They play fine with VLC, windows media player, cyberlink, basically every player I've ever used. I use daemontools lite to mount the ISOs. I also had the same problem playing a physical disk on the computer.

MC is version 17, downloaded and paid for it a couple weeks ago. I'm running a quad core AMD, SSD, 8GB ram, so I'm not limited by computing horsepower. My sound card is a claro plus. I updated the drivers to latest version and still had trouble. I don't think I've got anything too extraordinary in terms of equipment or configuration.

In any case, swapping to direct sound fixed it. I just have to keep swapping back and forth depending on whether I'm listening to music or watching video. Annoying but workable.

Unless there's a way to configure JR to automatically change outputs depending on the media selected.....?

And thanks for the post. I appreciate that you took time to reply.

[MrC]

Create a second zone, and set the output characteristics for each zone.  Use one zone for video, one for audio.  Select the zone before you start playback, and then play your media.

[eddyshere]

I'm wondering if this is not a bad/faulty or just old audio driver problem. I remember back in the early days of protools that errors in audio DACS due to poor asio/vst driver resulted in playback sounding just as unusually slow.
I do not know the claro plus soundcard (actually had never heard of it here in Europe and just having looked at the ht omega website I couldn't see anything which seems "recent"....but as said I have no further knowkedge of ht omega soundcards) and to me the card looks much like an asus-soundcard or some other c-media based OEM card (which I saw here in europe I would say a good while ago and were highly rated amongst "connaisseurs" as you had direct kernel output they were sold as no brand, cheap and were good value for the money). Are the drivers recent (i mean are the latest drivers from ...let's say max last 2-3 years?)?
If not I would definitely try it out with another soundcard, to check if the same happens.
 
Just a thought...

[shimrod]

The omega claro card is several years old, but I did update the drivers before I posted my problem. The new drivers were late 2011 I believe, certainly less than 2 years old. The card was advertised as a higher end audio card (for what that's worth), without electrolytic caps and designed for music. Not a gamer card.

Considering the sound is fine when selected to direct sound and messed up when selected to wasapi event style, would that still implicate the drivers? Either way the sound card is the output device. I'll admit I don't know enough about the differences between the two modes to say.

Thanks for your suggestion.

[eddyshere]

Yes it does, when using direct sound the os uses also the driver but in another way than wasapi (windows audio Session api) which is a specific API for vista and 7. The difference for the purist is that wasapi is bit perfect (as asio allowed firstly for xp) when using direct sound that's not the case. I'm convinced other forum members know even more the technical details.
Anyway I have spend a lot of money in high end audio and consider myself as audiophile but what i have definitely found out is that perfection on paper and specifications is not the most important factor. If it works and it sounds ok FOR YOU hold on to it. I used several soundcards but ended up in having all processed by my receiver.
I understand you output through spdif to you receiver. Depending on the receiver you might have even a better dac in there. for DVD If it can decode dd and dts just bitstream these formats ac3 and dts, and transmit pcm for bluray (as through spdif you cannot bitstream the bluray dolbyhd or dts master hd) and your audio files. This should work ok and keeps you from switching. You don't really need an audiophile soundcard if you use its spdif ouput (not talking jitter and this kind of stuff)
Actually if your dvd initially sounded "funny" through spdif you could try changing bit depth or resolution of the pcm signal. Don't know how knowledgeable you are on these topics but just google bitstream vs pcm. This will help you understand the various options of transmitting audio and formats between htpc and receiver.