i have a surround reciver and i tryed to connect it to the pc through the s/pdif out to the coaxial in the reciever (i have an onboard soundcard with 5.1 surround capability that comes with my asus p4s800 motherboard) , the problem is the reciever gets the sound signal but does not show the ac3 sign on it's display. what should i do to get the ac3 to the reciever ? i'v looked at all the configurations , i run ac3 films in mpeg4 format with ac3 filter .
found the problem myself . the ac3 was embeded in the mp3 soundtrack of the divx film wich ofcours my reciver dos'nt recognise. i downloaded a sample .vob file with ac3 from the net and the reciever reeds it. so now i just have to switch my mp3 soundtracks into vob
Hoping you can help me with the same problem. I can get audio from my pc to my receiver (marantz 4300), to work fine with matrix surround, but when I play a DVD(from Sony DVD-Rom)the receiver wont pick up an ac-3 (or dts) signal. I have a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 card. I dont completely understand how decoding of 5.1 surround sound works, does the pc send an raw digital signal to the receiver or does the pc need to do the decoding for each channel and send that to the receiver. Im wondering this because I have heard that you need certain DVD playing software (heard WINDVD works) to get the Ac-3 signal to go through. Also not sure if this is related but, do I need the audio cable from the DVD-Rom directly to the sound card ? What does that cable do? If you could please shed as much light on these issues as possible. Cheers,
Hope I can help... Ive had a similar problem with my Denon AVC-A1SRA A/V Amp, when i connected it to my Creative 5.1 sound card via Coax Digital, i couldnt get Dolby Digital to work at all, the amp detected the digital "signal" from the card which was in Pro Logic II only. After reading the manual on the soundcard i descovered that you have to DISABLE AC3 decoding as this hasnt got anything to do with Dolby Digital at all. AC3 makes your sound card decode the Dolby Digital signal into 6 analogue channels out instead of "actual" raw digital signal out. This doesnt mean that AC3 will turn off your digital out signal, but what it will do is enable your other 3.5mm audio jacks for giving out analogue signals. SO disable AC3 and you should find that Dolby Digital will work on your amp, providing that you have a Dolby Digital compatible sound card and your amp is setup correctly. Hope this helps
I've been able to get this to work on my setup, using a Chaintech $28 7.1 Surround Card with SPDIF Optical output into an RCA 5.1 receiver (RT2600 w/DTS). Now, logically, there are 2 ways to think about doing this: 1) Using 1 digital cable. This is SPDIF Coaxial or SPDIF Optical, it doesn't matter so long as the receiver is able to decode Dolby Digital on the input (*NOTE* SOME CAN'T, for example, my other receiver, RCA RT2550 can't decode Dolby Digital on the coaxial, only the opticals, but my RT2600 can decode it on all the inputs). What you need to do is besure to have the latest version of DirectX (sound silly? it isn't, it is needed), the newest drivers for your card (If you use a Via Envy 24HT-S based card like I do, use teh ViA drivers). Then Install AC3Filter (certainly you have already and set it to output via SPDIF. In your sound card driver panel, be sure to enable the digital output, and have it auto-select between AC3 and PCM (this way you can have Dolby Digital and MP3 work together, otherwise you have to do it seperately which is quite annoying). It should work when you play something with AC3 5.1. DTS is different, I haven't been able to get that to work. Since most DTS is off a DVD, I use a DVD player for that, it's not likely divx/xvid has dts in it, but when they do I'll have to figure that out. 2) Have the PC decode it. This way you'll be using 3 of the 1/8" miniplug to dual RCA connectors (red/white). You'll have a cable for each pair of channels (usually left+right, rears, center+sub) coming off the sound card, and six inputs going into the receiver. Make sure your receiver has a 5.1 analog input. Having not been able to do this successfully, I dont know what you do, but it should be able to be done. I assume your sound card has to have built in AC3 decoding capabilities. My recommendation: get a cheap Via Envy 24HT-S based sound card if you don't have a surround card already, and use that through the optical output (not all have it, but most do). These aren't good gaming cards, but are cheap, and give you surround capabilites with simple ac3 passthrough. It's really all you want to do with AC3, is simply pass it through to the receiver. That's why you *NEED* to set the AC3Filter config screen to output via SPDIF. Don't use anything else, don't use 5.1, don't use ProLogic II, they don't give you Dolby Digital.
Thanks Guys, I disabled the Ac-3 decoding in the Creative control panel, all seems to work Ac-3, dts. Cheers, Shadowfax _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Shadowfax - You know, Gandalfs horse from the Lord of the Rings[/small]
