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[capfan]

I'm having an issue when watching movies in Media Center where the 5.1 audio channel mapping on HDMI becomes incorrect.  For instance, the center channel will come out of the left speaker and the subwoofer channel will come out of the right speaker.  Basically the 6 audio channels get scrambled up and stay that way until I reboot my system.  I do not believe the source of the problem is Media Center, but I'm wondering if anybody else has encountered this problem?

My setup is a Dell Inspiron 3647 small desktop with a Haswell Pentium hooked up to my Preamp (Emotiva UMC-200) via an HDMI cable.  I have the audio output set to always output 192 KHz/24-bit 5.1 PCM audio over a WASAPI interface.  When watching movies the frame rate over HDMI typically switches to 23.98 fps, and when doing other stuff it will switch back to 60 fps.  If I repeatedly switch between watching different movies and skip around within the movies, eventually the channel mapping will become wrong and stay that way until the computer is rebooted.  I can also just leave the computer on for a while and many times I will try to play a movie and the channel mapping issue will occur.

In order to eliminate JRiver Media Center as the source of the problem, I can close it and open the Windows sound test application which will still play audio out of the wrong channels.  In order to eliminate the Pre Amp as the source of the problem, I unplugged the HDMI cable from the computer and then connected my TV to the computer with another HDMI cable.  While the TV only supports a stereo input, the left/right channels will be swapped.  So once the issue occurs with 5.1 audio, it will carry over to 2 channel audio.  Rebooting the system is the only way to correct the issue.

I am currently using the Intel HD Graphics / Display Audio drivers provided on the Dell website, but if I use the latest version from the Intel website, the issue seems to get worse.  This issue cannot be fixed by powering on/off any device connected to the PC or replugging in the HDMI cable.

I get the impression that this is a universal Haswell issue with HDMI Display Audio, based on comments on some Intel forums I've seen, perhaps tied to switching video frame rates.  If it really is, I'm wondering has anyone else has seen this issue?

[JimH]

What version and build of MC are you using?

[capfan]

I'm currently using MC 20.0.14 on Windows 8.1, but I've had this problem for a while now.  Another note, I called Dell support to tell them about the problem and they decided to replace my motherboard, which did NOT resolve the issue.  While using Media Center may trigger the problem, it persists after closing the application and can be seen simply by using the Windows audio test application that plays dings on each of the speakers.  When the issue occurs the dings will play out of the wrong channels.

[JimH]

192 KHz/24-bit

As a test, try 96/16.

[capfan]

I will give 96 KHz a shot when trying to trigger the issue, the next time I'm near my system, but I can say that once the channels become scrambled it does not matter what the frequency of the audio signal is after that point.  I don't think I will be able to choose 16-bit audio, since if I choose anything other than the "Auto" setting for bit-depth I don't get any audio out of my system.  Also, the Windows audio test application does its testing with a 48 KHz signal and the channels are still wrong.

[capfan]

So I tried changing the sample rate to 96 KHz and the HDMI channel layout was still able to be scrambled.  I also tried fixing the refresh rate to 23.98 fps to see if switching between 60 and 23.98 was causing the problem.  Neither experiment prevented the issue from occurring.

I'm basically unable to stream high-resolution surround sound PCM on the HDMI interface without encountering this issue.  I probably saw this issue many months ago and decided to bitstream audio on the HDMI interface, which works without a problem, to avoid this issue.  It's a shame that I can't upsample the audio and stream as PCM, since it genuinely sounds a lot nicer than bitstreaming.

But I'm still left wondering, does anybody with a Haswell CPU using the HDMI interface (sourced from on-board Intel HD Graphics / Display Audio) run into this problem when sending 1080p 23.98 fps video with some variation of surround sound PCM (using JRiver to decode the Dolby or DTS)?

[Sipheren]

I tried out JRiver to see if I could get stereo sound (FLAC 192/24bit) to send to the sub woofer as well (I read JRiver could do that). For some reason in JRiver when I went to the room setup stuff the sub channel wasn't the sub, the rears were wrong also. I would set the Fronts to send everything under 50Hz to the sub and nothing would come through the sub. So I figured something was weird with the app.

After reading this I may need to do some more playing around as it may be the chipset.

I am using a Gigabyte Brix i3 system connected via HDMI to a Marantz SR5001. I ended up having to set my amp to small fronts and that way it sends sound to the sub as well, which isn't ideal.

[JimH]

Testing from Windows Control Panel > Sounds might also give you a clue.

[mwillems]

I tried out JRiver to see if I could get stereo sound (FLAC 192/24bit) to send to the sub woofer as well (I read JRiver could do that). For some reason in JRiver when I went to the room setup stuff the sub channel wasn't the sub, the rears were wrong also. I would set the Fronts to send everything under 50Hz to the sub and nothing would come through the sub. So I figured something was weird with the app.

After reading this I may need to do some more playing around as it may be the chipset.

I am using a Gigabyte Brix i3 system connected via HDMI to a Marantz SR5001. I ended up having to set my amp to small fronts and that way it sends sound to the sub as well, which isn't ideal.

You may not be experiencing the same issue as OP if your channels are always incorrect (his are only intermittently incorrect).  

If you open up JRiver's DSP studio and look in parametric equalizer you can use the "order channels" filter (or the "mix channels") filter to rearrange/remap the channel outputs.  If your channels are "off" as a steady state proposition, you can easily use those tools to find out what channel the sub output is actually coming out on, and you can fix things.

What you're describing sounds like a basic case of the outputs on your receiver being in a different order than JRiver's default channel ordering, which happens pretty regularly.  JRiver uses the video standard channel ordering, but not all receivers/devices observe the standard (or they do little "tricks" to work around).  For example, in the 5.1 standard, the 5th and 6th channels are SL and SR.  In the 7.1 standard the 5th and 6th channels are RL and RR.  JRiver handles this change seamlessly, but some receivers don't "swap" the outputs when switching between 5.1 and 7.1.  So you have a case of JRiver correctly outputting the rears on 5 and 6, but the receiver's outputs for 5 and 6 are labelled SL and SR (or vice versa) and you get incorrect playback.  I have a device like that, and I just use "order channels" or "mix channels" to fix it.  

Another diagnostic.  Start playback of some stereo content that you know has bass content below 50Hz (not all music has much down there) and watch the analyzer in DSP studio; do you see activity on the Sub channel?  If so then JRiver is correctly creating the sub channel, there's just a routing problem.  If not, then you're not getting the sub created, and we'd need to get into your DSP settings (in which case it might make sense to start a new thread).

[Sipheren]

You may not be experiencing the same issue as OP if your channels are always incorrect (his are only intermittently incorrect).  

If you open up JRiver's DSP studio and look in parametric equalizer you can use the "order channels" filter (or the "mix channels") filter to rearrange/remap the channel outputs.  If your channels are "off" as a steady state proposition, you can easily use those tools to find out what channel the sub output is actually coming out on, and you can fix things.

What you're describing sounds like a basic case of the outputs on your receiver being in a different order than JRiver's default channel ordering, which happens pretty regularly.  JRiver uses the video standard channel ordering, but not all receivers/devices observe the standard (or they do little "tricks" to work around).  For example, in the 5.1 standard, the 5th and 6th channels are SL and SR.  In the 7.1 standard the 5th and 6th channels are RL and RR.  JRiver handles this change seamlessly, but some receivers don't "swap" the outputs when switching between 5.1 and 7.1.  So you have a case of JRiver correctly outputting the rears on 5 and 6, but the receiver's outputs for 5 and 6 are labelled SL and SR (or vice versa) and you get incorrect playback.  I have a device like that, and I just use "order channels" or "mix channels" to fix it.  

Another diagnostic.  Start playback of some stereo content that you know has bass content below 50Hz (not all music has much down there) and watch the analyzer in DSP studio; do you see activity on the Sub channel?  If so then JRiver is correctly creating the sub channel, there's just a routing problem.  If not, then you're not getting the sub created, and we'd need to get into your DSP settings (in which case it might make sense to start a new thread).

Thanks for the reply, I will take a look at this on Saturday, see if I can work this out properly.

[capfan]

I also posted this issue at:
https://communities.intel.com/message/209570
and it confirms that at least one other person has seen this.

I ultimately ended up adding an NVIDIA GT 720 to my system and haven't had any problems since.  I can also use Red October HQ without a problem and stream video to JRemote without repeated pausing, which are nice bonuses I didn't expect.

[Sipheren]

You may not be experiencing the same issue as OP if your channels are always incorrect (his are only intermittently incorrect).  

If you open up JRiver's DSP studio and look in parametric equalizer you can use the "order channels" filter (or the "mix channels") filter to rearrange/remap the channel outputs.  If your channels are "off" as a steady state proposition, you can easily use those tools to find out what channel the sub output is actually coming out on, and you can fix things.

What you're describing sounds like a basic case of the outputs on your receiver being in a different order than JRiver's default channel ordering, which happens pretty regularly.  JRiver uses the video standard channel ordering, but not all receivers/devices observe the standard (or they do little "tricks" to work around).  For example, in the 5.1 standard, the 5th and 6th channels are SL and SR.  In the 7.1 standard the 5th and 6th channels are RL and RR.  JRiver handles this change seamlessly, but some receivers don't "swap" the outputs when switching between 5.1 and 7.1.  So you have a case of JRiver correctly outputting the rears on 5 and 6, but the receiver's outputs for 5 and 6 are labelled SL and SR (or vice versa) and you get incorrect playback.  I have a device like that, and I just use "order channels" or "mix channels" to fix it.  

Another diagnostic.  Start playback of some stereo content that you know has bass content below 50Hz (not all music has much down there) and watch the analyzer in DSP studio; do you see activity on the Sub channel?  If so then JRiver is correctly creating the sub channel, there's just a routing problem.  If not, then you're not getting the sub created, and we'd need to get into your DSP settings (in which case it might make sense to start a new thread).

Just in case anyone has the same issue, I solved it for my setup. My Marantz amp had a setting called "bilingual", not really sure what it's for but it was set to Main+Sub and that was taking my sub channel and putting it through the other speakers, this was screwing up the mapping in JRiver.

Once I turned it to Main only it all started working perfectly.

Thanks for all the suggestions mwillems, I did try them all and it eventually led me to going through all the settings on the amp.

I have also gone through and tuned everything to my room using JRiver and music is sounding amazing now.