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[kosmos108]

Hi all,

This may be a boneheaded problem since I have had this working properly before. I upgraded the disks in my computer and encountered a playback issue each time I try to play an audio file.

Audio Card: Asus Xonar Essence STX (PCIe)
OS: Windows 8 Pro

Within windows the Audio is configured with Speakers on Asus Xonar Essence STX Audio Device set as the default playback device.

Within the Control panel for the Asus Xonar Card Dolby Digital Live is set as the SPDIF Passthrough output. With 6 Channels Set for the Audio Channel setting.

The computer is connected to a Dolby 5.1 receiver via SPDIF.

With this setup I can playback anything (except FLAC) in Windows Media Player, games work, Blu Ray playback is fine with PowerDVD 13. However I can not Play an audio file in Media Center 18. Each time I try I get a 'Something went wrong with playback. Playback could not be started on the output 'Direct Sound'. However as soon as I set the output to SPDIF in Media Center 18 it plays back audio files.

It should be playing back to the Speaker Device but each time I set that as the output or even the Primary Sound Driver as the output, Media Center 18 stops playing back audio until I set its output setting to SPDIF. This creates a problem with audio playback as it effectively bypasses the multichannel audio configuration.

Short version of the question why is it that Media enter 18 will only playback an audio file when set to SPDIF when it should be using Primary Sound Driver?

I have probably overlooked something bone-headed but I cant think exactly what...

[icstm]

OK, can I check a couple of things with you (there are others probably more abreast of these issues, who could answer you straight away).

1) DDL converts sounds to ac3 (dolby digital), so are you getting ALL sounds from your computer registering as DD on your Receiver? (ie from your computer sounds, eg new mail, windows critical error etc as well as music and video sounds)

2) If you switch off DDL does your computer behave in a different way?

3) If you set up the machine the way you like and you ask JRiver to play a track already encoded in ac3 does this play correctly?

My guess is that JRiver is trying to send a signal as LPCM over S/PDIF and your soundcard driver is trying to change this into ac3.

There is nothiing wrong with trying to get your AVR to only process ac3 and that works well for games in surround sound.