Win 8.1.1 vs Win 7 with MP 1.8 (1 Viewer)

[Stéphane Lenclud]

Which sound hardware was that?

 

[kszabo]

Which sound hardware was that?

first thank you for your reply.

The sound hardware was/is:
AVR: Yamaha RX-V473 connected over HDMI to PC and Panasonic Viera GT30 Plasma
GFx: AMD Radeon HD5470 with Catalyst 14.4 (latest)

as I said if MP is running full-screen without any media playing then the HDMI audio remains active (AVR shows "PCM") on Win7 but gets deactivated on Win8.1 (AVR shows "decoder off"). The result is that the AVR misses the short GUI sound effects (jumping between states "decoder off" and "PCM") because of the short lag of reactivation. If I play something non-bitstreamed (=AVR gets PCM signal all the time) I have the GUI sound effects of course.

As I said this is clearly OS specific (same MP, same Catalyst, same hardware). Nevertheless if MP could keep HDMI audio somehow active all the time could be a good solution (not even a workaround IMHO).

old german thread about the same problem, but before win8.1 era

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

I see that's HDMI so the hardware is your GPU in fact...

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

Likely an audio driver or hardware issue with the new behaviour of Win8, unless it's really MP doing something funny.
Sounds like Win8 turns off audio when not in use to save power. While it's a welcome feature it seems to be causing us problems.

Can you try to test if this is also an issue in Windows in general? Do system sounds suffer from the same problem?
That would tell us if this could potentially be fixed in MP or it's dependencies?

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

What's AVR?
Are you using BASS? Did you try other audio renderer?

 

[kszabo]

I see that's HDMI so the hardware is your GPU in fact...

yes, I know, that´s why I stated it and the driver of the HDMI audio device is part of catalyst

Likely an audio driver or hardware issue with the new behaviour of Win8, unless it's really MP doing something funny.
Sounds like Win8 turns off audio when not in use to save power. While it's a welcome feature it seems to be causing us problems.

That is my opinion too.

Can you try to test if this is also an issue in Windows in general? Do system sounds suffer from the same problem?
That would tell us if this could potentially be fixed in MP or it's dependencies?

sorry to dissapoint you but I can not ATM as I´ve gone back to Win7... as far as I can remember the system sounds had some more delay and are longer so I could hear them, but my AVR did the same game ("decoder off" - "PCM" again off...)

What's AVR?
Are you using BASS? Did you try other audio renderer?

AVR is the acronym for "audio/video receiver" -> that´s my Yamaha amplifier
I guess I used bass as I did not change anything from default.

 

[megahorst]

Perhaps this solves the audio problem:
AVR Audio Guard
http://www.marcsapps.co.uk/

 

[kszabo]

Perhaps this solves the audio problem:
AVR Audio Guard
http://www.marcsapps.co.uk/

great! next time I give Win8 a shot, I will try this. It adresses exactly my issue.

 

[kszabo]

A year gone by and.... I gave a new shot for win 8.1 and had the same problem again... And the tool you suggested solved the problem the reveiver shows PCM 5.1 continuously (except during bitstreaming Dolby or DTS) and I have my GUI sounds!!! Thank you @megahorst