ASIO bit perfect playback throughout mediaportal? (Chaintech audio card) (1 Viewer)

cyberfix

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I hope this has not been posted before, but I have searched and waited for an answer to this. I have one of the Chaintech sound cards and use ASIO4ALL for ASIO support. In MS MCE, I get bit perfect sound over the optical output. When I tried media portal, I can not get this to work. I have read that MP supports ASIO through the BASE engine for MP3 playback and movies through WinAMP with the ASIO plugin. I really would love to use MP with all of the internal players working with bit perfect audio over optical output. Is this possible at this time?

I appreciate any feedback that anybody has to offer and hope that I am not missing an old post about this exact topic. This has really been the only thing keeping me from making the switch. Of course, I will miss my MyMovies plugin for MCE. :)

Thanks!
 

cyberfix

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Did I place this in the wrong forum or I have I missed a previous post explaining this in detail or is the answer not known? I looked through the manual and FAQ again and did not see an answer about full ASIO support.
 

grubi

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Did I place this in the wrong forum or I have I missed a previous post explaining this in detail or is the answer not known? I looked through the manual and FAQ again and did not see an answer about full ASIO support.

Still fighting with the same probelm.
Any progress on your side?

Regards,
grubi

Still fighting with the same probelm.
Any progress on your side?

Regards,
grubi


The first sign of getting mad is if you quote yourself and answer your own questions.:D

However I will do this for reference, so that others having similar problems get on the right track.

If you have a C-Media 8738/8768 based soundcard and wantto output via spdif to you external receiver you could achive pitperfect playback also without ASIO. Simply install the alternate drivers from dogbert found at http://cmediadrivers.googlepages.com and you get bitperfect palyback. If you do not need support for any digital inputs on your card this is the preferred solution IMHO. The dirvers are opensource and are very reliable and they also support s-pdif 48 Khz passthrough for ac3/dts. Again thanks to dogbert for this great piece of software.

If you have a different soundcard where no ASIO driver is available you could try to install ASIO4ALL which is a generic ASIO driver which hooks onto you sounddriver and exposes a ASIO interface to 3rd party applications. You can find it at http://www.asio4all.com.

If you have a soundcard with ASIO driver simply install this one.

To check if you have bitperfect playback simply play a DTS Audio file sampled at 44.1 Khz. If you hear only noise it is not bitperfect.

Attention:
------------

To get bitperfect output you have to set the output level of the BASS enging to 100%.

During the fadein / fadeout period you will hear only noise on playback of a DTS audio file. After that output should be ok.

I found that when using ASIO and I changed some settings in MP-Setup I always had to reboot the pc, otherwise I got no sound at all.

HTH

grubi.
 

Koudijs

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    To get bit perfect music within MP you need the following options in configuration.exe:

    - Music->Player settings: Select the BASS player (screenshot 1)
    - Music->Music ASIO: tick 'Use ASIO (available with BASS only)' and select your ASIO device (screenshot 2)
    - Plugins->External Players: Make sure all external players are disabled

    If you'r still having problems after this you should attach you mediaportal.log file.


    Regards,
    Jan
     

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    grubi

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    To get bit perfect music within MP you need the following options in configuration.exe:

    - Music->Player settings: Select the BASS player (screenshot 1)
    - Music->Music ASIO: tick 'Use ASIO (available with BASS only)' and select your ASIO device (screenshot 2)
    - Plugins->External Players: Make sure all external players are disabled

    If you'r still having problems after this you should attach you mediaportal.log file.

    Regards,
    Jan

    From what I found out this is not enough to get bitperfect output. You must also set output level of the BASS enging in configuration.exe to 100% as it is 85% by default ;)

    grubi.
     

    kenwonders

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    From what I found out this is not enough to get bitperfect output. You must also set output level of the BASS enging in configuration.exe to 100% as it is 85% by default ;)

    grubi.

    Sorry grubi, it's worse than that. I have set it at 50 for my M-Audio 5.1 and 100 for my CM878 chip card.

    Strangely, WinAMP is always the correct level on both, despite having no volume control whatsoever.
    .
     

    Koudijs

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    I indeed forgot to mention the volume setting.
    As you can see in the first screenshot I have set it to 100% aswell.
    Don't know why kenwonders has to set it to 50%, strange thing is I am also using an M-Audio Revo 5.1.

    Regards,
    Jan
     

    kenwonders

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    I indeed forgot to mention the volume setting.
    As you can see in the first screenshot I have set it to 100% aswell.
    Don't know why kenwonders has to set it to 50%, strange thing is I am also using an M-Audio Revo 5.1.

    Regards,
    Jan

    Really? What drivers do you use? That is interesting to see.

    Actually i don't use any, at 50% the volume level appears to be about right, but I get random clicks and pops all over. At 100% there was distortion too :( I am using WinAMP.
     

    Koudijs

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    I am using version 1.0.0.0 of the Revolution 5.1 driver for XP (the only one available).
    For ASIO playback I use version 2.7 of ASIO4ALL, not the M-Audio one that is part of the above mentioned driver.

    Regards,
    Jan
     

    cyberfix

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    Really? What drivers do you use? That is interesting to see.

    Actually i don't use any, at 50% the volume level appears to be about right, but I get random clicks and pops all over. At 100% there was distortion too :( I am using WinAMP.

    Here is a link to another thread that gives more details about the volume issue.
    https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/asio_and_crossfading-t23236.html?t=23236&highlight=asio+support

    My issue is that I have tried MP twice (months apart) and could not get ASIO support to work throughout. I do not want to use WinAmp or other external players for movies.

    Attention:
    ------------

    To get bitperfect output you have to set the output level of the BASS enging to 100%.

    During the fadein / fadeout period you will hear only noise on playback of a DTS audio file. After that output should be ok.

    I found that when using ASIO and I changed some settings in MP-Setup I always had to reboot the pc, otherwise I got no sound at all.

    grubi.

    I have not tried MP in several months as I keep waiting for an announcment to be made that says something to the affect of "MP now supports ASIO throughout!" It seems that all of the ASIO and bit perfect support is only in the internal BASS player for music files and external palyers for videos. Is that correct or am I missing the boat here?

    I have been using ASIO4ALL with my current setup (MS MCE) for some time now for bit perfect playback. I would like to be able to do the same thing using MP with all of its default internal players (movies and music). Is that possible? If not, is it planned? Using the internal player seems to be more seamless with MP and if it just had bit perfect playback... I could enjoy it once again.

    Will the soundcard drivers mentioned support the chaintech cards? I do not see it on the list and was not sure which chipset is used on those.
     

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