[dman_lfc]

Originally Posted by JonL

OK. I've been playing with this a lot and maybe you can expand on what I've found. I've been using MCE 2005 for over a year and am (hopefully) just being naive because I'm so used to how it works with my system configurations.

With MCE, MPC, or any other external player, I can playback AAC (MP3 is sent directly to AC3Filter) and see my receiver accept that as a DD AC3 3/2.1 stream. According to graphedit, what is happening is that the player sends the AAC stream to ffdshow where it is decoded to a 16-bit stream that is sent to AC3Filter for transcoding into a 3/2.1 AC4 640kbps audio stream (I have it configured for this). It then passes to an audio switcher and then out to the DirectSound device (soundcard). However, when using MP's internal player, the AAC file is sent to ffdshow where it is decoded into a 16-bit stream (I have tried the output to AC3 configurations posted in this forum with no luck) and sent directly to my default DirectSound device. AC3Filter does not pick it up...I can only assume, by design.

I have found that my receiver is getting PCM 48Khz that is multichannel, however (I believe, anyway). I have my receiver set for NEO:6 decoding and I get surround from all of these files that require decoding from the PC before reaching the receiver (AC3, DTS, PCM are all passed through correctly by AC3Filter). It sounds the same to me, but I'm just seeing that Dolby Digital Decoding light pop up on my Sony receiver like I'm used to with any other player I use aside from MP.

I've tried several different codecs for AAC (ffdshow, the included MPA, CoreAAC, and a couple others) and MP3 (ffdshow, Aud-X, AC3Filter - which is bypassed when going directly out to it) with no luck. I get the audio, I'd just really like to see that it's being passed as a DD AC3 stream. Should I just be happy with the PCM? Is there anything I can show you that may help my situation (I've been through the logs, but don't see anything that tells me anything).

I have decided to start using MP over MCE anyway...I just like it too well. I think I'm more curious as to how to get it working like that as opposed to really preferring it!

Thanks!

Yikes! complicated. So as I read it you're using AC3Filter to create a DDLive! stream similar to what some chipset now allow in drivers.
The reality is that MediaPortal does not give you expanded control of graphs and how they're built like MPC.
I'm not going to change the players to always add AC3Filter to the graph but if you say this works in MCE then surely it's a case of AC3Filter not receiving some info correctly based on the output from the audio decoder in the first place.

Try the changes today for WMV and see if it made a difference there.

DMAN