AVR + HTPC = No Sound

[Aikouka]

Alright, I am here again with yet another problem. I've Googled just about anything I can think of and the problem is... there's no definitive answer that I can find.

So, I'm using a Denon AVR-1610. It works fine with my XBOX 360 and fine with my PS3, but the HTPC is another story completely. If I'm playing a video with DTS, AC3, etc, the audio works fine. If I'm playing some AVI with mpeg audio, the audio will not work properly. It will either play for about 4-5 seconds and cut out (for good) or simply not play at all.

I'm fairly certain that this is actually a receiver issue or possibly a setting that needs to be set on my PC to be compatible with my receiver. The reason I believe this is because of the crazy work-around that I can use. If I am playing a video and switch to a different source on the AVR (say my PS3) and then back to the PC, it works without a problem. The audio will play just fine.

Note that everything is connected via HDMI.

I think I'm just technologically cursed.

 

[Rifter]

well i would try either a differnt HDMI port if you think its the reciever, might be a bad connector on that port. Also would consider a digital coax or optical connection from the HTPC and see if that helps. swap cables around too as it could be a bad cable.

What video card is in the HTPC?

 

[Aikouka]

The HTPC has a Radeon 5450.

As a note, I've tried monkeying around with using the default Windows codecs and FFDShow, but it seems the information found here...

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/02/using-ffdshow-audio-in-media-center.html

Is only tailored to 32-bit Windows, and I've completely fucked up my default codecs by forgetting to save the CLID of the original decoder as it seems that application that they gave does not show 64-bit codecs :\. To elaborate, WMC now refuses to play AVI files simply stating that it cannot play them, but WMP can still play them using FFDShow.

 

[kalrith]

I have that same receiver, and it works fine with my 4550 sending HDMI audio to it in Win7x64. Basically what you have is some sort of Windows, decoder, or codec problem. I had the same problem and didn't fix it until I reinstalled Windows.

With my previous AVR, I used digital optical out from my mobo. I was using MediaPortal with WinXP at the time, and I tried everything I could to get it to send audio via HDMI. It would work with certain files just like your setup, but others just wouldn't play any sound.

I installed Win7 64-bit and used MCE with no other decoding software (at least I'm pretty sure I didn't install any...I can check tonight if you want). It worked great right from the start. The only other thing I did was to disable the integrated sound in the BIOS, but doing that with my existing Windows installation did nothing for me.

Here's an avsforum thread that helped me go through some troubleshooting steps. Unfortunately I was never able to get it resolved without reinstalling Windows.

Good luck!

 

[vshah]

i've got the exact same card/receiver combo. i'm running through xmbc though, without issues.
what sort of audio codec is in the avi files? mp3? i'll try out a similar file when I get home. also...is it windows xp/vista/7? i had xp on my htpc before, and hdmi was a bitch to get working...i switched to win 7 and it just worked.

 

[Aikouka]

Sorry, looks like I forgot to include that pertinent information in the thread . I'm using Windows 7 Professional (64-bit). I actually recall hearing something about disabling the on-board sound to try to fix the problem... I uninstalled the Realtek drivers, but did not disable the sound. I'll have to try that.

 

[Chronoshock]

I'm pretty sure I know exactly what issue you are experiencing here. I had the same issue with a 5670 connecting to a Denon 1910.
The issue is best described here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1224697&highlight=5xxx The ATI power saving feature downclocks the card normally, and brings it back up to reference speeds during heavy load. When this clock shifting occurs, it screws up the audio buffer and you lose sound.
The workaround is to create a special profile that locks clock speeds to a set number. From looking at the thread, it appears catalyst 10.6 solves this, so maybe just updating will fix it for you.

 

[Aikouka]

Thank you for your help, Chrono... amusingly enough, I was tempted to upgrade the ATi drivers just to upgrade them... who woulda thought it could also fix the audio problem . I ended up using the Realtek HDMI drivers as recommended by the AVS Forums and it seems to be working fine.

I also undid everything that the Hack 7 MC site had me do. Finding the old MP2 decoder was an interesting challenge... I essentially took the video decoder's CLID, exported all of the CLIDs and then did a search to find the name of the video decoder and it just happened to have a paired audio decoder!

Also removed FFDShow from playing MP3s but I believe it is still handling the AC3, DTS, etc.

I was wondering, I almost always get random but not very common weird artifacting while watching videos... is that because I'm not using the special 29 FPS mode? It wants me to set my display to 1080i if I do that, which I think my 720p TV actually does support... but I was a bit wary to do it.

EDIT:

Ugh... still not in the clear. Now it seems that my MKVs refuse to play the center channel properly... it's literally so low that I cannot hear it without turning my Denon to -12 or higher . Also, during my mucking of things, I appear to have broken the ability to play MKVs in Media Center... all I get is a black screen kind of like what happened to my laptop when I was using it as a media center. I never figured out how to fix it. Maybe I'll try the whole DIVX thing to get it to work (if their site didn't happen to be down for maintenance right now ).

EDIT 2:

Okay, I fixed the problem with the audio. Apparently while messing with the receiver and trying to make the audio work, I hit the "D/ST" button, which set it into Direct mode. I'm not sure why that makes the center channel very low in volume (and the others not), but I guess it does . Now if I can just fix that silly MKV problem in MPC I think I'll be golden!

EDIT 3:

Actually, looks like I'm good... I decided to say screw it and just installed the Shark007 pack rather than mess around with all of the stuff I already had installed. I can run MKVs in WMC7, which is what I care about! I also looked at that DivX page and I remember why I never used it the first time... it doesn't support subtitles and hasn't been updated in nearly a year.