ASIO Music Player Plugin (3 Viewers)

[grubi]

...You are right to steer away from low budget for analog output, but I tend to stear away from analog output via HTPC altogether...

Yep, using an good external DAC is the best way to do things.

Grubi, do you have experience playing .ac3 files in MP? I'm playing around with it and i noticed that the BASS library, which my plugin is also based on, is actually not performing passthrough, but decodes them into 6 channels, and that in a totally wrong channel order. Now for the channelorder being wrong there's a fix available on un4seen.com, but routing that to s/pdif would result in only front-left and front-right being passed. Can you confirm that?

Sieds

I only use AC3 audio on DVD playback but not for music so far. What I can confirm is, that a DTS audio testfile sampled at 44.1 khz is properly passed through (otherwise you would only hear noise) to the external amp.

Supply me with a file and tell me what to test exactly and I will do it.

grubi.

 

[Symphy]

Here's an ac3 testfile:
http://www.lynnepublishing.com/surround/www_lynnemusic_com_surround_test.ac3
My prediction is: you'll get "center" on your left chan, and "rear-left" on your right, and nothing else.

Thanx,

Sieds

 

[grubi]

Here's an ac3 testfile:
http://www.lynnepublishing.com/surround/www_lynnemusic_com_surround_test.ac3
My prediction is: you'll get "center" on your left chan, and "rear-left" on your right, and nothing else.

Thanx,

Sieds

Ok seems to be broken.

Front left -> center
Front right -> center
Center -> front left
Rear right -> Front left
Rear left -> Front right

HTH
grubi

 

[Symphy]

Bugfix release

There's a bugfix release available for download:
https://www.team-mediaportal.com/files/Download/MediaPortalInstaller(MPI)/AudioorRadio/ASIOMusicPlayerPlugin/

• Fixed problem with extensionlist in configuration applet. Changes were not saved.
• Fixed false error in logfiles concerning audiodecoders not being loaded.
• Fixed problem with playing over WaveOut. Player would break when switching between songs with different number of channels or samplerate.

Sieds

 

[carukc]

I can give you only a suggestion I'm sure you won't like.
Simply invest about another 20 EUR and buy one auido card with a C-MEDIA 8738/8768 chip.
Then download the alternate sounddriver from http://cmediadrivers.googlepages.com and forget about ASIO and all the other things causing problems and simply enjoy hasslefree bitperfect audio of 44.1/48/88.2/96 kHz and properly passthroungh of AC3 (DTS and DD).

A list of tested soundcards is available on the link I supplied.

grubi.

Thanks grubi,

20 Euro is not to bad for bit perfect and cerainly less costly than trying endlessly to get the Soundmax chip to give me but perfect output. I've been trying for months... Moving to another chip might also solve another ongoing problem. The Soundmax chip will sometimes simply stop working if I stop a dts encoded video by closing TheaterTek or PowerDVD. Ony a reboot will bring sound back. I think that Vista is probably locking the chip and not releasing it when the player exits.

One of my media PCs will accommodate another card so I'll pick one from the list at the end of the link that you sent and give it a try.

The second of the two in an mCubed mini so will not accommodate another card.

Symphy,

You mentioned that the BASS library is not passing through but rather decoding and then (presumably) recoding. Might this explain the problem that I am having? Although it does not look like you bug fixes will do anything to resolve my problem, I'll give the update a try. Thanks.

Chris

 

[Symphy]

Symphy,
You mentioned that the BASS library is not passing through but rather decoding and then (presumably) recoding. Might this explain the problem that I am having? Although it does not look like you bug fixes will do anything to resolve my problem, I'll give the update a try. Thanks.

Chris

Carukc,

It depends on the type of files you are using.

• Files with .ac3 extension are being decoded. Currently when you play that over spdif, it will simply pass on front-left and front-right (Center and rear-left without the BASS hotfix https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/ac3_files_tip-t29185.html) and discard the rest. No recoding is done. You will hear something like music though, not static hiss or anything.
• There are also DD or DTS encoded wav files. They can have the extension .dts or simply .wav. Those files are not being decoded but passed through. These will sound like hiss when bitperfect passthrough failes.

I haven't yet figured out a way to also perform passthrough for .ac3 files. I get the impression though that not many ppl use those because no one noticed sofar that its actually completely broken.

Sieds

 

[carukc]

Sieds,

Ok.. Thanks for the info, I'll not waste time messing with an /ac3 experiment and will keep trying to figure out what is interfering with the dts files between your plugin, asio4All and the soundmax chip.

Just thinking out loud... I've connected asio4all to Vistas' HD audio interface (because connecting it to the Soundmax SPDIF that it's also found results in no sound at all). It may be that Vista is interfering with the stream. Perhaps there's a way to tell vista to ignore the interface so that I can get at it directly.

Thanks Again
Chris

 

[NoraK]

Great, great, great! I've been trying the ASIO option in the BASS player, but without any luck. I have an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard. Your plugin works right out the box. It should definitely be merged into standard MP. Support for VST-plugins would be a good thing, giving the possibility to use room compensation methods.

As I understood the plugin is only active when in the My music module, what about Internet radio streams? How is the ASIO option with BASS player working in this sense? I would like to get it clarified which player plays which sounds - music, TV, DVD, movie, system sounds and so on.

Regards
Nora

 

[Symphy]

... It may be that Vista is interfering with the stream. Perhaps there's a way to tell vista to ignore the interface so that I can get at it directly. ...

Your analysis sounds plausable. I've been told that Vista is using floating-point streams internally. Enabling floating point streams on my plugin also breaks bitperfect playback. Apparently the soundmax drivers do not allow ASIO4ALL to direct-drive your device.
Many other software that support spdif passthrough use some kind of "non-pcm" mode, which i don't have available through the BASS library. For MP, i'd go for a solution that's known to work. Grubi's solution looks promising.

Sieds

...As I understood the plugin is only active when in the My music module, what about Internet radio streams? How is the ASIO option with BASS player working in this sense? I would like to get it clarified which player plays which sounds - music, TV, DVD, movie, system sounds and so on...

Hi NoraK,

The My Radio module does not access the external player plugins, so it will use either the standard BASS player, or the directshow player, depending what is set in MP's configuration. The standard BASS player currently does not play webstreams at 48kHz samplerate when in ASIO mode, and that breaks many radiostations. The directshow player is all Windows-builtin-stuff and there's no ASIO support at all.

You can however play webstreams from the My Music module, through the use of .pls files. This allows you to web-stream over ASIO using PureAudio plugin. Maybe we should do a feature-request to the MP team to make player plugins available from My Radio.

System sounds, TV, movies and DVD's is all directshow stuff as far as i know, so no ASIO support there either....

Sieds

 

[torpedo]

Thanks for this new plugin. The sound quality is splendid, when using it together with my Auzentech X-Meridian sound card.

But I have a problem when the plugin is active. I now have to manually start the next track, even the next track is highlighted in the list. When de-activating the plugin and using BassEngine the next track starts playing automatically as expected.

I'm running Windows XP, plugin ver. 0.1.1.1 and MP 0.2.3.0 RC2 (same problem with the newest SVN). Can't find any settings related to this issue in the setup of the plugin.

Any ideas what the problem might be?