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[hurz]

Hi everyone,

I'm happily using the great WDM driver for any audio from external apps (Kodi, browsers, foobar etc.) but one thing still bugs me:
I'm desperately trying to get Netflix 5.1 Audio (bitstreamed Dolby Digital Plus from the Netflix app) played by the JRiver MC20 somehow.

As far as I know, the WDM driver only accepts up to 7.1 PCM channels, but not bitstreamed audio.
On the other hand, the Netflix app is not decoding the multi-channel audio but only outputting a DD+ bitstream.

Is there any way to make this work? Some kind of virtual sound card decoding the DD+ into PCM and passing it to the WDM driver?
Or will the WDM driver support bitstreams any time soon?

There are virtual sound devices/cables available as well as hijacking programs, but all that I could find are only supporting PCM in/out.
One would have to somehow pass the sound to a direct show filter (like ffdshow/LAV) first, but I'm not aware of any software that can do that and can be set up as a windows sound device.
The only thing I can remotely think of is AC3filter, which cannot decode DD+ as far I know?
Then there are soundflower and AudioHijack, both of those only on OSX...

Is anybody watching Netflix in multi-channel audio on a HTPC WITH JRiver (or other) postprocessing and if so, how?
Or could I output to another actual sound card (like the onboard card) and somehow input that back into JRiver?

I'd appreciate any help on this an would of course offer any assistance in testing this if there is a "JRiver" method of achieving this?

[hurz]

So it seems I made it work, although through a little workaround...

So the WDM driver does not accept bitstreamed sound but seems to play the Stereo part of the stream at least (Audio Path shows 2ch for the Netflix 5.1 track).
On the other hand, using a different sound card (like the onboard one) capable of at least 5.1 channels will allow playback of bitsreamed sound through the WASAPI loopback function. Unfortunately I didn't have another 5/7.1 sound card available, only SPDIF outputs (which don't allow for speaker settings) or 2ch HDMI (my TV).
 
But the WDM driver can be configured to 7.1 channels and although it's only supposed to accept PCM, I can send it the 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus bitstream and THEN grab it via the loopback function from the WDM device.
Oddly enough this seems to work perfectly, Audio Path shows 8ch input and I can hear the surround effects perfectly fine.

The disadvantage of this solution is that I have to actually start the loopback playback unlike the regular WDM driver path where MC detects the sound and plays back "IPC".
I wonder however, as the DD+ bitstream is clearly decoded somewhere in the path described above why the WDM driver cannot do bitstream in the first place? It just seems like a small adjustment of routing the sound correctly through MC.

As I could now use loopback (instead of the WDM driver directly) for all sounds external to JRiver MC (including bitstream), can I somehow set up MC to always play back the loopback stream (and keep it alive indefinitely) without having to start it every time?
Is there any (audible) disadvantage in using loopback from WDM device instead of the WDM driver directly?


EDIT:
After some more testing I found out that this method only works with DD+ and TrueHD bitsreams, NOT with AC3(regular DD) and DTS-HD. The latter formats are apparently not recognized (silence).
This puzzles me as it seems TrueHD and DD+ (maybe only the DD+ core of TrueHD is played back) can somehow be accepted by the WDM driver while DTS and regular DD cannot, although the latter should be very similar to DD+.

So my final solution is to still use loopback for everything but try to decode all sounds in the source players, except Netflix which doesn't allow that but gets played back just fine in 5.1 as it is.

[dwalme]

How is this working out for you?

I am also able to have Netflix Windows App play to the JRiver WDM virtual device.   Then open the Wasapi loopback stream in JRiver.  Audio seems to work for the Netflix app.

Now just need to automate it all.