SB Live 5.1! makes crackeling when decoding dd 5.1

[exrty]

Hi,

My sound card produces crackeling, some kind of noise when i play dolby digital 5.1. I configure the player sound output as SPDIF and i let the soundcard dto decode the ac3 stream.

I've tried a week ago to install the last driver from the creative labs site (LiveDrvPack.exe) and it was worst. So i put back the inital driver shipped with the card.

The "noise" is not very regular. Sometimes after rebooted it's decreased. Also it changes sometimes from front and sometimes from rear speakers. I've called the creatives labs support and they want me to investigate into the PCI problem. I've removes all the PCI cards except the soudncard. I've changed the pci settings and i've always the problems.

I've also tried the reduce the hardware optimization and it's seems to reduce a little bit the problem. But for the moment i have no solution.

Sure somebody has already had the problem.. Thank you

exrty

[tiki4]

Hi exrty,

I've got an Audigy (v1) and sometimes I experienced the same problem. It seems to be a problem of various influences though. Sometimes increasing the PCI latency in the BIOS may help (default is often 32 cycles, increase to 64 for example). But this has to be done carefull. I also think that this problem occures more often on VIA boards, so newer chipset drivers may help as well.
The solution for me was even more strange: I found this problem when I installed WinDVD 4 (Multichannel) the first time. I was wondering what the hell was the problem. Then I uninstalled and went back to WinDVD 3 and the problem disappeared. Uninstalling and reinstalling WinDVD 4 and the problem was still gone (?). The solution for me is now to install WinDVD 3 on a new Windows installation first, then uninstall and install WinDVD 4. I don't know why this works and I never investigated it too much since it's just a few minutes of work, but it worked for me.

Good luck!

tiki4

[exrty]

It work for me too. Even with the last driver update. What a trick !! :-))


Let me thank you. I've uninstall windvd and now i do not ear anymore this awful crackeling noise....

Best regards and congratulations.

computer "science" you said ?

exrty

[exrty]

ohoh.. that's not quite simple. Still but less. I'm not sure now. I'm continue to investigate this track..

exrty

[exrty]

The crackeling sound disappeared like said in my first response but only using software decoder. When set to SPDIF so hardware decoding. Still crackeling.

exrty

[tiki4]

VIA chipset, Athlon CPU ?

Try your luck then in the Alive! forum, just do a search for 'Alive!' in Google. It's a site dedicated to SB Live/Audigy/Audigy 2.

Hope this helps.

tiki4

P.S.: It's tricky business and Creative, hm...

[exrty]

Thank for your help Tiki4.

I've resolved my problem yesterday evening. I've unregister all my directshow ac3 and mp3 filters from the system and reinstall them and now the sound is clear...clear...clear...

By error, i had a curious sound problem (no more sound) and that makes me do that. So it was a directshow filters problem. I'm not a specialist so i don't know if it was a conflict or an adress alignment problem or i don't know what.

So i looked for all directshow filters that was loaded during playback an dremove them and reinstalled them starting with the ac3 one.

By the way tiki4, i also use now when i need it (special downmixing) the software decoder present on this forum : http://xvalex.hotbox.ru/programs/ac3filter
really a great done.

What a pity we cannot control or modify the downmix parameters of the hardware ac3 decoder of the card.

Thank you for your help.

exrty

[tiki4]

I'm glad you resolved that nasty problem. It is still very annoying to play AC3 files in AVI or OGM on the computer. It seems that there are neverending problems (if you take a look at the AC3 FAQ). However instead of a plugin that does downmixing I'd be more glad to have a plugin that does up-mixing like WinDVD 4 can do. For example making use of the 'Dolby Surround 2' downmix matrix in BeSweet to get better compatibility with DPL II, I'd like to reverse that process via an DirectShow filter so that the necessity for 6 channel storage is no longer there, instead store 2 channel and calculate 6 from them. Unfortunately DPL II specs seems not to be available to the public and it seems one needs such a filter to produce a 5.1 signal.

tiki4

[exrty]

I understand. But did you already test the Prologic II against DD5.1 ?
I recognize, i've never test win dvd4 prologic II engine but just ones aboard HC integrated amplifiers.

Sure it will be great to reduce to only 2 channels like dolby surround soundtracks.

Sincerely, i'm don't believe so much to get a good result from a Prologic II ans especially due to low pass filters etc... If it was the case, i easily imagine Dolby had never created the dolby digital. By the way, regarding the growing of medias capacity, i'm not sure that today a DD5.1 is very important unless you have to move it through a network.

But i'm also intersting to test a DPL II if it was.

[tiki4]

O.K.,

of course DPL II doesn't sound like DD 5.1 but if you are at the surround formats: still best is DTS 5.1 which sounds really superb.

Anyway, I created some SVCDs from 'Fellowship Of The Ring' and stored the soundtrack as 224 kBit/s MP2 with 'Surround2' downmix matrix from BeSweet (DVD2SVCD supports that now, too). WinDVD happily recreates the channels from the SVCD and it doesn't sound too bad in my opinion. Of course if you've got really expensive equipment that may be different.

tiki4

[exrty]

you're right

see you

[grahf]

edit: whoops posted to the wrong thread