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**fincheresque** · 2009-12-28, 18:51

Here's a question, is there any way to detect how many speakers are configured in Windows?

My reasoning is this:
The channel mappings all make sense assuming a 6-speaker setup. However, if you have 8 speakers, when you play 6-channel material, the surround information comes out the back-speakers while the surround-speakers are quiet.

I'm going by the thought process that in a home theatre the surrounds should actually be to the right/left of the listener rather than behind them in an ideal placement. (or so says Denon and Crutchfield and other sources I've read up on)

Obviously if outputting digital (DD/DTS), it's a moot point, as the receiver will handle the speaker mappings properly...but it seems 'odd' when dealing with analogue output (let's say, FLAC)...

Just wondering, thanks!

**neil.j1983** · 2009-12-28, 19:33

just seen that it's been commited to svn!

awesome.

on the 24-bit, it would be great if it could be added, but nvidias drivers currently dont support 24bit through wasapi (although they do through ASIO). So please make it optional if it does get added. I cant hear the difference, but thats not to say others cant.

ArtVandelae · 2009-12-28, 19:37

The audio output modules for all the platforms simply pipe the audio to the speakers it was designated for. Aside from correcting the channel order on a few formats (so that your center channel isn't sent to your rear speakers for example) the output modules don't do any mixing. The feature you described seems like it would be something that either your receiver could handle or possibly something that the MasterAudio branch might address some day.

As for passing 24/32 bit sources without downconverting, it is possible but it will take some work. Fixing DVDPlayer to pass 24/32 bit audio for FLAC/TrueHD/etc is fairly easy, but PAPlayer requires some deeper changes.

floepie · 2009-12-28, 20:21

Art, Thanks for putting this together! It works great with one pretty big caveat. It seems that the DVD player is able to use the WASAPI output and not the default PAP player for music files. The reference test for WASAPI output is with the use of 44.1 kHz DTS WAV files transmitted to a DTS decoding receiver via a SPDIF connection. If the DTS WAV file can be decoded properly by the receiver and music is heard, WASAPI works. However, if music is heard without the DTS light, which would be the case if the 5 channels were merged into 2 channels, there is some manipulation of the audio stream by the stream, and hence, no WASAPI output.

In a separate test, a 5 channel AC3 WAV 44.1kHz file results in mangling of the sound by the PAP player and perfect playback by the DVD player. All WASAPI-aware music playback apps are able to play these two types of files flawlessly. Was it the intention to make the PAP player WASAPI-aware?

**fincheresque** · 2009-12-28, 20:51

Thanks for the response,

See, that's what seems strange. So, windows is configured with 7.1 speakers.

Let's say I play a 5.1 movie using digital output, the Denon recognizes DD 5.1, and sound comes out of FR, C, FL, SR, SL, SW as it would if I played it through my standalone BD or DVD player.

If I switch to analogue output and let XBMC do the decoding, the sound comes out of FR, C, FL, BL, BR, SW, which to me seems to be a problem with the way the speakers are mapped within XBMC.

If I go into the speaker applet in Windows, clicking on each speaker confirms that windows sees them mapped correctly. (i.e. if I click on the SR speaker icon, the SR speaker dings)

If I switch windows to use 5.1, then both digital and analogue come out the same speakers.

Does that make sense? It's not a huge deal, because I can just edit the source and change the channel mappings manually...it just seems like something is a bit off...

Thanks again!

ArtVandelae · 2009-12-28, 21:52

Nathanjones, I think you are right. After doing some reading it seems that the speaker configuration flags for 5.1 audio are wrong in both the WASAPI and DirectSound sinks. I'll change it and make a test build to see if it fixes the problem. Give me a few minutes...

ArtVandelae · 2009-12-28, 22:13

Alright, give this a try.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y3ALH3O5

**fincheresque** · 2009-12-28, 22:26

That was quick!

That seems to work fine. I really appreciate the help. This is twice now (for something I've personally mentioned anyways) that the developers have jumped on what would be a minor issue to most, but still fixed it in pretty incredible time.

I need to get my programming skills up to snuff...I've written programs thousands of lines long in archaic languages...but I've never had time to pick up C++ Sigh.

Much appreciated, as always.

ArtVandelae · (This post was last modified: 2009-12-28, 23:01 by ArtVandelae.)

No problem. I'll submit the patch so that it will be fixed in SVN.

floepie,
The WASAPI output module only outputs what it was given, no more no less. If PAPlayer is doing unwanted processing on the audio there is nothing the output module can do about it.

rickardkk · 2009-12-28, 23:01

"The file you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable."

Great to see mapping corrected. But the file can't be downloaded?

ArtVandelae · 2009-12-28, 23:11

It just worked for me.
Try it again?

rickardkk · 2009-12-28, 23:34

Nope, same message as before. I'll try tomorrow again. Thanks!

**fincheresque** · 2009-12-29, 03:45

The channel mapping fix is in SVN now as of 26148, so I'm off to compile. Thanks again!

floepie · 2009-12-30, 06:08

ArtVandelae Wrote:floepie,
The WASAPI output module only outputs what it was given, no more no less. If PAPlayer is doing unwanted processing on the audio there is nothing the output module can do about it.

Oh, OK thanks. Off topic, is there a way to use DVD player as default player for all audio then?

adelias · 2009-12-30, 18:24

floepie Wrote:Art, Thanks for putting this together! It works great with one pretty big caveat. It seems that the DVD player is able to use the WASAPI output and not the default PAP player for music files. The reference test for WASAPI output is with the use of 44.1 kHz DTS WAV files transmitted to a DTS decoding receiver via a SPDIF connection. If the DTS WAV file can be decoded properly by the receiver and music is heard, WASAPI works. However, if music is heard without the DTS light, which would be the case if the 5 channels were merged into 2 channels, there is some manipulation of the audio stream by the stream, and hence, no WASAPI output.

In a separate test, a 5 channel AC3 WAV 44.1kHz file results in mangling of the sound by the PAP player and perfect playback by the DVD player. All WASAPI-aware music playback apps are able to play these two types of files flawlessly. Was it the intention to make the PAP player WASAPI-aware?

Until paplayer can be made to work with WASAPI, I'm using dvdplayer by creating an advancedsettings.xml file in the userdata folder with the following contents:

Code:
<advancedsettings>

<audio>

<defaultplayer>dvdplayer</defaultplayer>

</audio>

</advancedsettings>