Any tips for getting audio to play "directly" to the AVR with no processing?

[Marc_G 92]

Hi folks,

 

Yesterday I unpacked a nice new AVR and connected a spiffy little Windows 10 set top box to it.

 

In short order I had configured Windows to output up to 7.1 channels to the AVR over HDMI, and clicking the test button from the windows audio test utility for each speaker was rewarded with test tones coming from the correct speaker. The AVR was confirming it as receiving 7.1 audio. Hooray. That was easy.

 

However, no matter which video player I use (Emby Theater, Kodi, MP-CHC), the AVR still reports 7.1 channels instead of switching to directly match the audio format in the movie file. It does recognize other formats instantly, such as if I switch over to my Smart TV as an input source and play something from Netflix, it switches to DD for example.

 

So, my suspicion is either I've configured something in Windows that is overriding the player settings and forcing the computer to remap whatever audio stream is playing, to a 7.1 configuration. 

 

In Emby Theater, for example, I've told it to use the Denon AVR as the output device and that my speaker configuration is 7.1. I've done similar configurations for my other players.

 

I think I've probably done something silly, but this is the first time I've done audio over anything other than SPDIF, and even that I configured years ago.

 

Any ideas to help me troubleshoot this would be appreciated!!

 

Marc

Edited December 26, 2016 by Marc_G

[Luke 37022]

Try setting the audio bitstreaming mode to hdmi.

[Marc_G 92]

Thanks Luke.

 

I think I got it sorted. In ET, I already had selected bitstreaming to HDMI, which prompted my perplexity. In the end for ET I needed it to look like this, which sort of makes sense. Some of the "Default device" settings didn't work. Needed to set it to WASAPI:

 

 

In MPC-HC I needed to configure two screens:

 

and in Kodi (using Arctic Zephyr From Ashes Danvers b6) I had to actually be playing a file, apparently, before I could enter the correct audio menu:

 

 

I hope this is helpful to others with similar questions.

 

Note, I still haven't quite sorted everything. I'm not entirely sure DTS-HD and TrueHD and so on are playing correctly. Still need to learn about the AVR and it's display abit.

 

I will say that choosing different audio options in ET made very significant changes to how stuff played on my wimpy little Tronsmart. Some combos of Video/Audio/subtitle settings made things completely unwatchable. It's a complex dance, I'm finding. I'll post more in my "flickery video" thread once I have more useful observations!

 

Marc

 

EDIT: Sorry about the huge pictures! Next time I will resize them.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Marc_G

[clarkss12 295]

Thanks for all the info you are providing.

[JAH 0]

Thank you very for the info, I too got Denon receiver this past holiday (and a new NUC to go along with it) and using your helpful setting, I got MPC-HC to bitstream/passthrough perfectly.  However, I cannot get Kodi to passthrough the audio to the receiver even with your suggested option.  All the DTS/DD encoded files still showing PCM Multi In through Kodi.

[Marc_G 92]

I'm still struggling to get the HD forms sent through (likely due to the platform I'm using), but if you go into the audio options there are a lot of things to enable to make sure it works. Go to Settings \ System \ Audio, then scroll down through the items on the right. Make sure "Enable Passthrough" is selected there, and keep scrolling down. Choose the AVR as the passthrough device, and make sure all the formats below are also turned on. For me, some of them were off, making them be sent through as PCM.

 

Doing this got everything except TrueHD and DTS-HD working for me.

 

Let us know how it goes!

[Marc_G 92]

Hi folks, as the OP on this thread I'm wrapping this one up from my perspective. My current problem with HD audio on the Tronsmart Ara X5 Plus is outside the bounds of this general "how to bitstream" thread, so I will be posting specifically to that thread (here) from now on.

 

I hope the documentation here is helpful to others!

 

Marc