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[PierreBCN]

Hi all,

First post here. I've owned MC 17 for about a year and other than importing my music and a few movies, I've done little to personalize it so far.

Anyways, I have 2 major doubts.

1) First of all, I have an HTPC with an Asus Xonar Essence ST card along with the HD6 add-on card that makes it a 7.1 analogue output. I have the HTPC connected directly to a 7 channel power amp. It works pretty good and I manage the volume with what W7 provides.

I'd like to move to a superior output mode such as ASIO or WASAPI but NEED to keep some type of volume control within the HTPC or I'll blow my speakers! Can someone tell me how to do it. The wiki does not give much info and I haven't found a similar post in the forum (Although I'm sure this is not the first time someone asks!)


2) My second question is more general. I'd like to keep my pc on all the time so that I don't have to turn it on everytime I want to listen to music (using my tablet and gizmo), what setting in W7 do you recommend?

I've tried with sleep mode (after a few minutes of no use) but It often freezes and I don't think I can wake it up with gizmo, can I? What is a good balance between usability and power saving?

Many thanks in advance.

[Wungun]

I use WASAPI analog output in my Xonar without any issues. There is an option for which "device" to assign volume control.

Sleep mode is a must have for a HTPC in my opinion. You should try to find out what is causing the hangup. First thing is to check the BIOS settings in power management...make sure it's set to S3 mode.
Next, if that didn't work, unplug all peripherals and start testing, eliminate hardware as an issue.
Make sure all drivers are up to date.

I use my USB wireless mouse to wake my computer (also a setting in the BIOS). I simple switch on the mouse, give it a wiggle, and I'm at my desktop in a matter of seconds.

With that said, I've never been able to successfully sleep on my desktop PC. Memory controller/BIOS issue (which I'm not upgrading as it's stablely overclocked)

[mwillems]

Hi all,

First post here. I've owned MC 17 for about a year and other than importing my music and a few movies, I've done little to personalize it so far.

Anyways, I have 2 major doubts.

1) First of all, I have an HTPC with an Asus Xonar Essence ST card along with the HD6 add-on card that makes it a 7.1 analogue output. I have the HTPC connected directly to a 7 channel power amp. It works pretty good and I manage the volume with what W7 provides.

I'd like to move to a superior output mode such as ASIO or WASAPI but NEED to keep some type of volume control within the HTPC or I'll blow my speakers! Can someone tell me how to do it. The wiki does not give much info and I haven't found a similar post in the forum (Although I'm sure this is not the first time someone asks!)


2) My second question is more general. I'd like to keep my pc on all the time so that I don't have to turn it on everytime I want to listen to music (using my tablet and gizmo), what setting in W7 do you recommend?

I've tried with sleep mode (after a few minutes of no use) but It often freezes and I don't think I can wake it up with gizmo, can I? What is a good balance between usability and power saving?

Many thanks in advance.

For 1) Set JRiver's volume control for "Internal Volume."  You should also probably set a maximum volume that is as loud as you want the program to go.  That will let you adjust the volume in JRiver, and prevent it from getting too high.   If you also set the volume protection option to "on" it will prevent you from changing the volume very quickly (prevents accidents) and will also reset the control to 20% if you haven't used it in a while. 

You'll need to manage sound coming from other programs the way you currently do.  If you want to prevent any program other than JRiver from sending sound to the ST,  you can set the windows default soundcard to your disconnected motherboard soundcard, and then use JRiver's loopback function if you want to filter web sound through JRiver's volume control.

I used to use an Asus ST H6 combo, and had it hooked directly to block amps using this method, so I can vouch for it. 

[PierreBCN]

Thank you mwillens and Wungun!

I set the internal volume and tried with ASIO first. I will also check WASAPI. In effect, got the volume going and I did setup a max volume and the protection on.

Strangely enough, all of the sudden my channels were all wrong. Dialogue (central) was coming off from a back speaker! I did the channel offset through the settings and got at least the center speaker in the right output. I need to do some more checking to confirm that the rest of the speakers are outputted correctly.


Also, I was able to control the volume (internal) from my keyboard but after rebooting it wouldn't anymore? Really weird.

Still need some more time as far as sleep mode. I set it up to go into sleep mode after 30 minutes but It froze and I couldn't wake it up with either the mouse, keyboard or front buttons. I will try to set the Bios to S3 mode

Thanks all again. I'll keep you posted on how things develop.

[Wungun]

I've had terrible results with ASIO on my Xonar's...I use WASAPI, but I'm only running 2 channel analog.
When I was running 2 Xonar's in my car (needed 9 output channels...active crossover), there was only ONE Asus driver (and a beta at that!) that allowed me to use all 16 discreet channels without any "cross talk"...
This was running ASIO4All...which is an ASIO wrapper.
You might have to test different drivers or different mode.

[PierreBCN]

Thanks again Wungun,

Never thought driver issues would pop up like that on a high-end and bestselling audio card! Go figure.

I will switch to WASAPI to see if things are a bit more stable. I think I've got the channels correctly positioned now but never even thought of having cross talk!

Still working on the sleeping mode....

Keep posting till I get it!

Cheers

[PierreBCN]

Ok a bit of an update.

Last night the Essence ST card acted up on me again. It simply vanished from the pc. No card found and no sound; as if, I had uninstalled the card altogether!

I played with the molex power connection, after reading in other forums that some people solved theses problems like that.

It worked and the card is working now fine (with the Asio4all driver). This leads me to believe that it might not be a driver problem to begin with but a power one.


In any case, two more question:

1) Although I am using internal volume in MC, I still have 2 volumes as w7 tray volume is still there. I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of Asio right? How can I get rid of it?

2) Using Asio, the volume is now much, much lower than previously in Direct mode. I really need to crank it up to near 100% and I'm no head banger. Is this normal?

Cheers and thanks everybody.

[Wungun]

If one of your default sound devices in Windows is something other than the device MC uses, you will get 2 volume sliders...
I have an audio zone and a video zone setup in MC. When I play video, the MC uses my onboard sound device (which is connected to my TV). When I play music, it automatically switched to my Xonar, which is fed to my amps. In Windows sound properties, my device is the onboard audio (so if I'm streaming video thru a browser, it's not pumped thru my amps...important because of annoying, sound playing popups!!)

Go thru your Xonar sound properties in Windows...by default, the Xonar drivers set volume of the card to 80% if max. You want it at 100% because you're using internal volume control. (Make sure you check option to maximize volume on sound device in MC options). Also, open the Xonar control panel and make sure you go thru all the setup pages to ensure vol is max and no sound effects are enabled.

Personally, if you're not using an audio patcher/studio with your soundcard, I'd forego ASIO in favour of WASAPI.

Hope this helps!

[Wungun]

I really need to sell my D2's and find a ST!
Awesome card and open for modification!