Getting Dolby Digital Live/DTS Neo working on Win8 Crapper Edition?

Grall

Invisible Member
Legend
I thought windows had built-in support for dolby digital live, or is that just for the more expensive editions rather than OEM version? Can't seem to make it work.

Reason I ask is because I believe the sound driver for my mobo (ASUS Maximus VI Gene) audio has completely bugged out. Seriously. When I set audio out to 5.1 analog outputs (just got my powered rear surround speakers fixed today) I find that the front and surround outputs are switched around, and on top of that no audio at all comes out of the front speaker jacks anymore, even though they worked just fine only a week or so ago.

When I uninstall the audio driver software to revert to default driver, windows thinks all the audio jacks are unplugged. On top of that, windows actually spontaneously restarted when hotplugging one of the audio jacks (!!!) to try and make the OS "recognize" it, which makes me think there's a software issue at fault here rather than a hardware problem.

I thought maybe the built-in DTS Neo support of my mobo driver could help me here, but it says NEO support is only available in 4-speaker mode or above, and I see no way to set speaker mode when optical output is selected (creating a magnificient catch-22 situation). Setting analog out to 5.1 doesn't help at all, it makes no difference.
 
Wow.. your post is confusing...

First of all, if the front and surround outputs are switched around... why not just switch the jacks?

Secondly, why would you want DD Live/DTS Neo for what appears to be an analog system?


If your problem really is software, have you tried uninstalling the drivers through a removal tool that will also erase the register definitions?

In case your audio codec is from Realtek (the internets won't tell me), you could always try these hacked drivers:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...olby-digital-live-and-dts-interactive.193148/
Though it sounds a bit absurd that you would need these drivers to get surround encoding when the official ones already do that.

EDIT: Looks like it has a Realtek 1150.
 
Wow.. your post is confusing...
Well, sorry about that.

First of all, if the front and surround outputs are switched around... why not just switch the jacks?
Yeah, except first of all, the green jack is supposed to be front channel (left and right) and the black jack (no pun intended :p) is supposed to be surrounds. If I follow color coding, I get surround channels playing through the front speakers and front channels through the surrounds - except they're completely silent.

If I switch them around there's still no sound through the green jack marked as front speakers even if I plug the black surround cable into it; all that happens is that I get the (arguably less important) surround channels working playing surround channels like they're supposed to...

Secondly, why would you want DD Live/DTS Neo for what appears to be an analog system?
My system has both analog and SPDIF inputs, and why, because the analog outputs are currently FUBAR'd, that's why. :)

If your problem really is software, have you tried uninstalling the drivers through a removal tool that will also erase the register definitions?
No idea where to get hold of such a tool. The uninstaller that comes with the drivers apparantly doesn't do a good enough job of it.

In case your audio codec is from Realtek (the internets won't tell me), you could always try these hacked drivers:
That's a good tip; I'll check it out. Thanks!
Edit: looked at the hacked driver and unfortunately it runs afoul of the god-damned thrice-cursed windows signature enforcement bullshit MS put into later OS releases. Damn, I just can't deal with that. Oh well, it was a good tip though! Thanks again.

I also might just reformat this OS and do a clean slate reinstall... IE11 is borked in that it won't let me disable spell checking and autocorrect (what a PITA when you communicate in more than one language!), and flash is borked too after I nuked the required DLLs.

Though it sounds a bit absurd that you would need these drivers to get surround encoding when the official ones already do that.
No, they don't, which is why I had to make this post. :(

You don't get any audio during the windows audio config test?
Well, what I meant is, setting 5.1 speaker mode for analog output won't help enabling DTS Neo; it still claims I need at least 4 speakers without actually letting me select how many I got! Blah.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
No idea where to get hold of such a tool. The uninstaller that comes with the drivers apparantly doesn't do a good enough job of it.

Any software uninstaller could do the trick. The last time I used the free version of Revo, it worked fine.



That's a good tip; I'll check it out. Thanks!
Edit: looked at the hacked driver and unfortunately it runs afoul of the god-damned thrice-cursed windows signature enforcement bullshit MS put into later OS releases. Damn, I just can't deal with that. Oh well, it was a good tip though! Thanks again.

The last page from the thread I linked has this post for W8.1 users:

Hello everyone, here is my experience with the hacked driver on win 8.1:

1. you need to disable driver signature enforcement, run these in command prompt
bcdedit -set loadoptions DISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECK
bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON

2. secure boot must be turn off in bios, otherwise the TESTSIGNING cannot be change and will always forced to on

3. the modded file need to be signed, no matter it is a self/test cert or else, you can use a tools call deso to sign it yourself

4. enable the "dolby home theater" in the realtek hd audio manager will UPMIX anything to 5.1, disable it if you don't want to upmix anything (personally I hate to upmix)

5. you can install PCEE (dolby home theater) to enable more features

here is a pack of driver (6.0.1.7095) with PCEE (7.2.8000.17), download from station-driver and with the mod file signed and replaced:
https://mega.co.nz/#!2ZpxjACB!JqgrDxxl_Y805A5ABuJ8OiLaJcZfYzYrpAEePk0_XHs

unrar it, install the driver, and then install DolbyHomeTheater.msi from pcee 4 folder.

p.s. it will show as "test mode" on the desktop after disable the driver signature enforcement, you can use some tools to remove the watermark.


I would try using the uninstaller first, though.
Or you could go to the registry and erase everything related to realtek. Not exactly the safest thing to do, but what's the worst that could happen? Your sound output is already screwed anyways, lol.
 
Hah. Success! :D

In the "Default Format" combobox, when scrolling all the way down to the bottom below all the 24-bit formats my decoder can't handle, there's a DTS Interactive setting. I just enable that, and suddenly everything Just Fucking Works, I don't need to set 5.1 speakers anywhere, apparantly. Whuh. Oh well. Why complain?

Realtime DTS sounds great by the way even though the audio is compressed. Real 'oomph' in the sound, and surround also works as expected.
 
Yes, SPDIF surround formats only support 16-bit. You can do 24-bit with SPDIF if it's stereo only, AFAIK.

So you were trying to enable DTS Connect with 24-bit, but the error message said you had the number of speakers wrong instead of the incorrect bit depth?

Sounds like bad programming on Asus'/Realtek's side...
 
The proprietary Realtek audio settings applet (which basically does the same thing the standard windows control panel applet, except with more/stupider graphics and icons) has a GUI with buttons at the top to select either traditional analog line outputs or digital SPDIF.

There is also a set of tabs in the lower part of the window, one for DSP-like environmental effects (which I won't use because they'll sound like crap no doubt), a DTS Neo tab, and then the Standard Format tab (which I assume is the internal input format for the audio codec IC; there's no real descriptions or help of any kind for any of this stuff.)

If you're using analog outs, there's an additional tab to select your speaker configuration; this tab disappears if you're using digital out. In the DTS Neo tab everything in the tab greyed-out; if you're in analog out mode you just can't use DTS obviously (as it's a digital format), but when actually using digital out, this tab is still grey, stating I needed at least 4 speakers or more to enable it. No information whatsoever how to set 4 or more speakers, or any option to do so.

Now, in the Standard Format tab, there's a combo box with a long list of digital formats of various bit depths and sample rates (most of them aimed at dogs or bats presumably, seeing as no human being has a real genuine use even for 96kHz sample rate, much less 192kHz. ;)) Now, as my PC sound system is a humble Logitech Z5450 from last decade, there's no chance it can play back any of those fancier formats, so I didn't pay too much attention to this combo box.

However, in the excellent Techpowerup thread you linked to there was an image of this combo box listing both DTS Interactive and DD Live. Now, I don't get the DDL option for whatever reason, but the DTS Interactive setting is there, and when selected the DTS Neo tab lights up, and games play 5.1 surround sound via the optical out...!

So, mostly a case of inconsistent, illogical, terrible GUI design. However, the audio codec works, and seems to consume an entirely negligent amount of CPU time too, it simply doesn't register at all in the windows task manager. Quite nice on the whole I must say, once I got it to work! Thanks again for the link, it was very helpful, although not for the reason either of us originally expected. ;)
 
Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect are optional licenses that can be purchased by the OEM for whatever is using that Realtek chip. You have a DTS license, probably in your BIOS ROM. DDL and DTS essentially get you the same thing.

TOSLINK can't do > 2 channel without DDL or DTS so that's why you can't choose the output configuration. If you are lucky and have DDL or DTS available, then you can use one of those for 5.1.
 
TOSLINK can't do > 2 channel without DDL or DTS so that's why you can't choose the output configuration.
Yes I grok that, but then why is the audio applet telling me I need to set *speaker mode* to at least 4 speakers? I actually CAN'T, since there is no such option.

What it should have told me is to select DTS Interactive as the output format.

Southeast asian companies rarely seem to produce very good software IME; either it is chock full of engrish, and/or has a terrible UI, and/or is very buggy. May have something to do with low-cost workforce doing all the job at lowest price possible. Companies spend only just enough resources on development that their driver/application (barely) works and no more.

*shrug*

...Or that's what it seems to me anyway.
 
Back
Top