5.1 AAC seen as stereo PCM

[tman 47]

Anyone know of a way to get 5.1 AAC movie audio tracks out of the win32 ET app in Windows 10 over HDMI to an AMP and somehow either retain the 5.1 PCM output, or get the AMP to decode via bitstream? At the moment, all 5.1 AAC movie tracks are sent as stereo PCM to my AMP. I know to bitstream, I'd need to convert the 5.1 AAC to either AC3 or DTS, but that seems to be the tricky part. The HTPC uses an ATI Radeon HD7750 GPU with the latest Radeon drivers.

[Luke 37050]

You can't bitstream aac so this is normal. Why would you want to convert it?

[Guest asrequested]

Are you using the store app or desktop app? And have you configured your windows audio to your speaker arrangement.

Edited April 1, 2018 by Doofus

[tman 47]

Thanks. I get the problem with bitstreaming AAC - despite how common it is, virtually no amps support it. What I eventually discovered though, was that if you setup your speakers correctly in Windows (5.1 setup in my case) using the wizard, Windows will automatically send AAC as bitstreamed 5.1 LPCM and the AMP will decode it, which is actually fine (I can see the AMP decode option light up). I think that's perfectly acceptable in the end, so I'm happy.

 

The Win10 app is the win32 desktop version by the way, not the UWP one. The UWP app is way too functionaly limited and not as smooth in operation as the win32 one. It also doesn't support RC6 remote controls, so it's a non-starter.

[Guest asrequested]

So what the app is doing is decoding it to PCM raw audio, so that your receiver can play it. There is a way to bitstream AAC, but this way is better. You do need to configure your speakers in windows, as when it decodes the audio it will use that to decide what the channel output needs to be.