Nforce Audio FAQ - read before posting [UPDATED - 25oct04]
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Nforce Audio FAQ - read before posting [UPDATED - 25oct04]
by Jimbob0i0 » Fri Jul 11, 2003 8:59 am
Q1: I am noticing static, high pitch squealing, cracks and pops, etc. from my speakers or headphones. How do I remedy this?
A: while this may seem like an easy problem to fix, there could be numerous causes of this problem. Some of the more common causes are listed below.
= Internal causes =
- BIOS and drivers
Make sure you have the latest motherboard BIOS, DirectX drivers, sound and video drivers.If you previously used a different soundcard, it's possible that stuff left behind by your previous driver is causing the problems. There is, unfortunately, no guaranteed way to fix this, other than doing a clean install of Windows. If you know how, use regedit and search (files and folders) to track traces of your old soundcard and get rid of them. Mute unnecessary lines - it is common for the Line In and in some cases the AUX line to cause noise in your speakers. If you are not using these lines then mute them. If you want to use them later, then unmute them.
= External causes =
- Cabling and connections
If you have a damaged cable this could be an obvious cause for noise issues. Much more likely than a flawed cable, however, is a flawed connection. If you have any "wiggly" connections, you should fix them. Bend the wire end double before you shove it into a clip, replace loose plugs if you can or use a pair of pliers to make them fit more snugly (careful! - You easily squeeze too hard). Alternatively, you can put a piece of paper in the socket to make for a tighter fit, but be sure you leave enough blank metal for contact.
- Amplifier and speakers
A low-quality or underpowered amplifier can cause cracks and pops in your sound at high output levels. If you get a really thick, distorted sort of booming echo on the sound at high levels, turn down the volume right away - you're hard at work destroying your speakers. The speaker is, electrically, a very simple device - essentially it's nothing more than a piece of wire wound around a magnet. The mechanical and acoustical aspects can be rather more complicated, but generally aren't. Suffice it to say, damaged and/or poorly designed speakers can cause their share of noise issues, but usually the cause will be elsewhere in the chain. Try out your amplifier and speakers using a different source than the PC - a Discman or a TV, anything really. This will immediately tell you whether the problem is (only) in your PC or not.
- Electric Interference
Of all the kinds of electric interference, the ground loop is probably the most common. It occurs when you connect two devices that use different electric ground levels. This happens a lot when you hook up your PC (which grounds on the ground lead in your electric outlet) to a TV, VCR or to a radio tuner (all of which ground on the antenna cable). Because of the different ground levels, electric current runs over your signal cable between the two devices. This manifests itself as a constant humming noise. To solve a ground loop, you have to put the two devices on the same ground level (i.e. in the same electric outlet, but this isn't always possible) or you have to electrically isolate the two devices. If you're using digital out, and you have the proper sockets on your PC and Amplifier, you can use optical digital out. In all other cases you can put a ground loop isolator in your cable. These can be found in any electronics store. The Ground loop is a common problem, and you can find a lot of information about them on Google (at the time of writing a search for "ground loop" yields 877,000 pages).
- Miscellaneous interference
The inside of a computer is, basically, signal hell. So is the giant knot of cables at the back. There's a lot of stuff in there packed close together, and all of it emitting its own electronic and electromagnetic garbage. Problems with this are hard to identify and harder to get rid of. Use good quality cable for better shielding, avoid winding cable into tight coils. If you have the means to receive the signal, it's generally better to use digital out than analog out.
_____________
Q2: I have a third party sound card that i want to use, but i cannot get the game port to work. I have disabled the onboard game port in the bios, but it still shows a conflict in the device manager.
A: On page 97 of the ASUS A7N8X manual, section 6.2 Troubleshooting. It states "If installing a PCI card with a game port, the PCI game port cannot be used due to a limitation of the nVidia chipset. However, the game ports on the MB will always function." Your motherboard may or may not have this information but it is the same regardless of motherboard make or manufacturer. Disable the onboard MIDI/Game port in the device manager, install your third party sound card. Enable the onboard MIDI/Game port, and disable the third party MIDI/Game port in the device manager. Now everything should work properly.
(Thanks to nforcer for the above two Q&As)
_____________
Q3: I've tried all the above but my win98se/winME install is skipping sounds and is awful... what can I do?
A: Two things:
1. Get the audio hotfix... read about it here, get it here and use this patch too....
2. Try turning down audio acceleration in the dxdiag.exe program.
_____________
Q4: I have checked all my settings. My mixer is fine. My speakers are fine. The NV control panel shows audio being played but I still can't hear anything... help me?
A: Check the fpaudio1 connector on the motherboard. Although it is technically a connector some of those pins need to be connected via a jumper. This can also cause audio missing from single channels too at times. It should look like:
: : | . |
: = open/no jumper
| = jumper
. = single pin to prevent backwards hookup
(Thanks to xlr8shun for that tidbit from months gone by)
_____________
Q5: I have checked everything... mixer, fpaudio, muting, speakers - nothing gives my sound!
A: Some people have had trouble with grounding issues... try using your motherboard outside of your case or putting paper between teh motherboard and whereever it contacts anything.
_____________
Q6: When I try to open the Nvidia control panel it tell me the audio driver failed to initialise, what can I do?
A: This is usually down to the differences between the southbridges on the board. Check the specifications for your board and make sure 'Soundstorm Audio' is there. If it just says 6 channel audio the chances are that you have the MCP southbridge or that the manufacturer of the board has not enabled 'soundstorm'
List of boards: http://nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=motherboards
For now if you have the MCP (ie no soundstorm) try the realtek drivers if you have problems with the nvidia ones.
_____________
Q7: Will Dolby Digital EX be supported for 6.1/7.1 surround setups?
A: Despite the fact that the rear channel is a matrix of the rear left and right channels Dolby would require new royalty rights and licencing agreements to implement this. Personally I don't see how they could do it for analog given the current connections but it is something they have said they would look to in the future and would be possible for the digitally connected users with updated drivers... although bug fixing is the current priority for the team not feature upgrades.
_____________
Q8: What do the encoding options mean?
A: Consult this table:
Note 1: Rear speakers are disabled, center/sub are disabled. Surround information is packed into the stereo signal.
Note 2: If you tick both Dolby Surround Encoding and Dolby Digital Encoding, you get Dolby Digital
_____________
Q9: Great, so what should I choose?
A: Either Dolby Digital or Analog 5.1. Use the Dolby Surround encoding function only if you have a Dolby Pro Logic surround system that supports neither of the other options. These days, such systems are extremely rare.
_____________
Q10: I have enabled Dolby Surround Encoding but I'm not getting any rear channels on my setup, why is that?
A: Dolby Surround Encoding (a.k.a. Dolby Pro Logic) is an obsolete audio technology that mixes a surround channel (mono 7KHz bandwidth for those imterested) into a stereo signal. Pro-logic amplifiers decode that signal and turn it into a rear channel. Because it's a stereo signal, NForce disables the rear speaker outputs and leaves it up to the amplifier to re-create them.
Dolby Surround Encoding is (by far) inferior to a normal 5.1 analog connection. It's only use today is for VHS tapes (anyone remember those?) and analog cableTV. To be honest I have little idea why that option is in the NForce drivers. Needless to say leave this option unticked.
_____________
Q11:My sound is coming out the wrong speakers. For example the sub out the centre and vice versa. What am I doing wrong?
A: For one reason or another the channels are wrong for your specific set of speakers. Grab nvswap to sort out your woes here.
_____________
Q12: If I am using the analog connections am I taking advantage of the Soundstorm's (i.e. the APU's) ability?
A: As long as you are using the nvidia drivers the APU will be taken advantage of. The realtek codec in that case is soley being used as a DAC. If you install the realtek drivers then the APU will be bypassed and all effects done using the CPU with the usual limitations (number of voices etc). If you have a board without the APU for now it may be better to make use of the realtek drivers otherwise use the nvidia ones.
See this image designed by Doc OC:
Note: the S/PDIF output can carry other types of signals than the two listed above. Mainly, it can copy any kind of digital audio off a DVD and pass it on unchanged. See Q15 for more info about this.
_____________
Q13: How can I get the best sound setup in my games?
A: Now this is a complicated question due to the sheer number of games, engines and interfaces out there - along with some propriety technologies thrown in for good measure.
OpenAL games: eg. Unreal 2 and UT2k3
For these the best way to set it up is to look for the ini file for the game, open it up and look for the audio section. Find the line that says 'usedefaultdriver' and change it from true to false. Also set EAX to false and set max voices to 64 (although it is highly unlikely the game will be able to generate that many in the current age). Finally ensure 3dsound is true
Then (to make sure this works) rename the file defopenal.dll to anything else so the program cannot find it. This will make sure it uses the Nvidia openal implementation rather than the wrapper creative supply to the game developers and ensures the best match with our hardware.
Miles Audio Engine: This has a section of it's own although it is common to many current sound engines in games. Quite often the game (particularly older ones) will hijack your speaker settings and reset them to either 2-channel or 4-channel. This is a windows/game implementation problem. The current solution is just to alt-tab or ctrl-esc out of the game... open the control panel.... set the speakers correctly... return to game. I know it is annoying but it is something that is being worked on and NV have said it is in their task list for upcoming drivers to find a way to implement speaker 'locking'
EAX: Now I know this is the bugbear for the majority of users. In theory the licencing surrounding direct3d allows for a EAX/EAX2 implementation.... however Creative have never been totally open for the API and even their drivers as trouble with EAX settings at times. With every driver this is something that NV are trying to improve but remember due to the nature of EAX (ie it is still Creative's propriety API) new games are likely to have initial problems until NV can implement a bug fix. The Soundstorm APU has more than enough power to do even better than EAX-HD for environmental effects but licencing prevents EAX-HD being implemented. Since the NV driver is doing some funky things behind the scenes for audio placement using the soundstorm anyway the chances are you will currently get the best sound for your games if you disable EAX and just use directsound3d for now. (certainly GTA-VC is best with this at the moment.)
_____________
Q14: Will there be a standalone Soundstorm card?
A: Now there are two issues at hand here. The feasability with regards to the bandwidths involved and the desireablity of removing one of teh most attractive aspects of the Nforce board and thus allowing it to work on alternative manufacturers' boards. For the former until PCI-express comes along next year it is not feasable. The bandwidths involved are 200MB/s plus with 64 3D voices, environmental effects, 256 2D voices, etc etc all going on and thus not possible over the current PCI bus. The latter issue therefore need not yet be discussed. The mobo scene may be very different next year when it is no longer a major issue. The other reason PCI-express instead of PCI is required for this is down to latency. The PCI bus gives each item an equal chance... the PCI-express is isosynchronous and allows data as needed... of course the current dedicated hypertransport link means as close to zero latency as possible.
_____________
Q15: How do I get DTS, DTS-ES, DD, DD-EX from my DVDs to my amp?
A: Now although the APU cannot decode any of these itself and cannot encode anything but DD itself any pre-encoded bit-stream can be redirected straight to the SPDIF out for external decoding. How this is done depends on the program but for the common ones:
WinDVD/PowerDVD - check first of all that you have a version that can do multichannel audio and can do SPDIF out. If you have this version of the software then check the audio optins for the program for a SPDIF option.
DIVXs/Xvids/etcs - The AC3Filter codec is used for this. Look in control panel for the options for it and set speakers to SPDIF and sample to PCM float. That should give the best output.
NOTE HOWEVER: The suggestions above are for those using SPDIF to a suitable set of speakers or amp that can cope with DTS etc. Otherwise you will need to set the appropriate options in the program to give multichannel analog audio.
_____________
Q16: Why did Nvidia go with poor realtek codecs on an enthusiast board?
A: They didn't. The reference board they originally produced featured a far superior sigmatel codec. The board manufacturers were cost-cutting with the realtek codec. If you want to get around this with your analog speakers see below.
_____________
Q17: I have a set of analog only speakers but want a digital connection because of the onboad DAC quality and/or the convenience of easier cabling... how can I get this?
A: Two ways to go....
1. Buy new speakers
2. Get a Soundblaster Extigy cheap from ebay or somewhere. This does have very good DACs and can do DD decoding. It also has a AC3 compatible SPDIF input. So use it standalone without connecting it to your usb ports... no creative drivers and much better sound quality.
_____________
Q18: Can I use the APU and another soundcard at the same time?
A: Yes, you can. Just install the add-on card in a system with the APU already configured. Both soundcards will be available in Windows. I have seen a system running three soundcards trouble-free this way.
Some software (good software
) gives you a list of all your soundcards on the options screen, and you can choose which soundcard you want to use. By far the most software, however, simply uses the Preferred Device. You can configure the Preferred Device on the Audio tab of the Sounds and Multimedia properties in the Windows Control Panel.
_____________
Q19: When I play a stereo source, the sound is mirrored to my rear channels. Can I get rid of that?
A: The new NForce control panel will give you a GUI option to disable mirroring. Until that gets released, you can use this fix that Mr.Mag!K found out:
Open RegEdit and search for ReplicateWaveFormatExStereoPcm. It should be in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\
{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001\Settings\APU\GlobalVolume
(the 0001 part may differ, its the one for 'NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio')
Setting ReplicateWaveFormatExStereoPcm to 0 disables rear channels in stereo.
Note: use caution when editing your registry.
_____________
Q20: After i've installed new drivers, ive lost my centre channel, how can i get it back?
A: Click start>run>regedit>find>"createcenter">change to 1> reboot
Forum Links:
What is SPDIF?
_____________
P.S. This is a work in progress........ Please post ideas for the FAQ in the discussion thread. This will remain locked to keep it clean.
A: while this may seem like an easy problem to fix, there could be numerous causes of this problem. Some of the more common causes are listed below.
= Internal causes =
- BIOS and drivers
Make sure you have the latest motherboard BIOS, DirectX drivers, sound and video drivers.If you previously used a different soundcard, it's possible that stuff left behind by your previous driver is causing the problems. There is, unfortunately, no guaranteed way to fix this, other than doing a clean install of Windows. If you know how, use regedit and search (files and folders) to track traces of your old soundcard and get rid of them. Mute unnecessary lines - it is common for the Line In and in some cases the AUX line to cause noise in your speakers. If you are not using these lines then mute them. If you want to use them later, then unmute them.
= External causes =
- Cabling and connections
If you have a damaged cable this could be an obvious cause for noise issues. Much more likely than a flawed cable, however, is a flawed connection. If you have any "wiggly" connections, you should fix them. Bend the wire end double before you shove it into a clip, replace loose plugs if you can or use a pair of pliers to make them fit more snugly (careful! - You easily squeeze too hard). Alternatively, you can put a piece of paper in the socket to make for a tighter fit, but be sure you leave enough blank metal for contact.
- Amplifier and speakers
A low-quality or underpowered amplifier can cause cracks and pops in your sound at high output levels. If you get a really thick, distorted sort of booming echo on the sound at high levels, turn down the volume right away - you're hard at work destroying your speakers. The speaker is, electrically, a very simple device - essentially it's nothing more than a piece of wire wound around a magnet. The mechanical and acoustical aspects can be rather more complicated, but generally aren't. Suffice it to say, damaged and/or poorly designed speakers can cause their share of noise issues, but usually the cause will be elsewhere in the chain. Try out your amplifier and speakers using a different source than the PC - a Discman or a TV, anything really. This will immediately tell you whether the problem is (only) in your PC or not.
- Electric Interference
Of all the kinds of electric interference, the ground loop is probably the most common. It occurs when you connect two devices that use different electric ground levels. This happens a lot when you hook up your PC (which grounds on the ground lead in your electric outlet) to a TV, VCR or to a radio tuner (all of which ground on the antenna cable). Because of the different ground levels, electric current runs over your signal cable between the two devices. This manifests itself as a constant humming noise. To solve a ground loop, you have to put the two devices on the same ground level (i.e. in the same electric outlet, but this isn't always possible) or you have to electrically isolate the two devices. If you're using digital out, and you have the proper sockets on your PC and Amplifier, you can use optical digital out. In all other cases you can put a ground loop isolator in your cable. These can be found in any electronics store. The Ground loop is a common problem, and you can find a lot of information about them on Google (at the time of writing a search for "ground loop" yields 877,000 pages).
- Miscellaneous interference
The inside of a computer is, basically, signal hell. So is the giant knot of cables at the back. There's a lot of stuff in there packed close together, and all of it emitting its own electronic and electromagnetic garbage. Problems with this are hard to identify and harder to get rid of. Use good quality cable for better shielding, avoid winding cable into tight coils. If you have the means to receive the signal, it's generally better to use digital out than analog out.
_____________
Q2: I have a third party sound card that i want to use, but i cannot get the game port to work. I have disabled the onboard game port in the bios, but it still shows a conflict in the device manager.
A: On page 97 of the ASUS A7N8X manual, section 6.2 Troubleshooting. It states "If installing a PCI card with a game port, the PCI game port cannot be used due to a limitation of the nVidia chipset. However, the game ports on the MB will always function." Your motherboard may or may not have this information but it is the same regardless of motherboard make or manufacturer. Disable the onboard MIDI/Game port in the device manager, install your third party sound card. Enable the onboard MIDI/Game port, and disable the third party MIDI/Game port in the device manager. Now everything should work properly.
(Thanks to nforcer for the above two Q&As)
_____________
Q3: I've tried all the above but my win98se/winME install is skipping sounds and is awful... what can I do?
A: Two things:
1. Get the audio hotfix... read about it here, get it here and use this patch too....
2. Try turning down audio acceleration in the dxdiag.exe program.
_____________
Q4: I have checked all my settings. My mixer is fine. My speakers are fine. The NV control panel shows audio being played but I still can't hear anything... help me?
A: Check the fpaudio1 connector on the motherboard. Although it is technically a connector some of those pins need to be connected via a jumper. This can also cause audio missing from single channels too at times. It should look like:
: : | . |
: = open/no jumper
| = jumper
. = single pin to prevent backwards hookup
(Thanks to xlr8shun for that tidbit from months gone by)
_____________
Q5: I have checked everything... mixer, fpaudio, muting, speakers - nothing gives my sound!
A: Some people have had trouble with grounding issues... try using your motherboard outside of your case or putting paper between teh motherboard and whereever it contacts anything.
_____________
Q6: When I try to open the Nvidia control panel it tell me the audio driver failed to initialise, what can I do?
A: This is usually down to the differences between the southbridges on the board. Check the specifications for your board and make sure 'Soundstorm Audio' is there. If it just says 6 channel audio the chances are that you have the MCP southbridge or that the manufacturer of the board has not enabled 'soundstorm'
List of boards: http://nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=motherboards
For now if you have the MCP (ie no soundstorm) try the realtek drivers if you have problems with the nvidia ones.
_____________
Q7: Will Dolby Digital EX be supported for 6.1/7.1 surround setups?
A: Despite the fact that the rear channel is a matrix of the rear left and right channels Dolby would require new royalty rights and licencing agreements to implement this. Personally I don't see how they could do it for analog given the current connections but it is something they have said they would look to in the future and would be possible for the digitally connected users with updated drivers... although bug fixing is the current priority for the team not feature upgrades.
_____________
Q8: What do the encoding options mean?
A: Consult this table:
Note 1: Rear speakers are disabled, center/sub are disabled. Surround information is packed into the stereo signal.
Note 2: If you tick both Dolby Surround Encoding and Dolby Digital Encoding, you get Dolby Digital
_____________
Q9: Great, so what should I choose?
A: Either Dolby Digital or Analog 5.1. Use the Dolby Surround encoding function only if you have a Dolby Pro Logic surround system that supports neither of the other options. These days, such systems are extremely rare.
_____________
Q10: I have enabled Dolby Surround Encoding but I'm not getting any rear channels on my setup, why is that?
A: Dolby Surround Encoding (a.k.a. Dolby Pro Logic) is an obsolete audio technology that mixes a surround channel (mono 7KHz bandwidth for those imterested) into a stereo signal. Pro-logic amplifiers decode that signal and turn it into a rear channel. Because it's a stereo signal, NForce disables the rear speaker outputs and leaves it up to the amplifier to re-create them.
Dolby Surround Encoding is (by far) inferior to a normal 5.1 analog connection. It's only use today is for VHS tapes (anyone remember those?) and analog cableTV. To be honest I have little idea why that option is in the NForce drivers. Needless to say leave this option unticked.
_____________
Q11:My sound is coming out the wrong speakers. For example the sub out the centre and vice versa. What am I doing wrong?
A: For one reason or another the channels are wrong for your specific set of speakers. Grab nvswap to sort out your woes here.
_____________
Q12: If I am using the analog connections am I taking advantage of the Soundstorm's (i.e. the APU's) ability?
A: As long as you are using the nvidia drivers the APU will be taken advantage of. The realtek codec in that case is soley being used as a DAC. If you install the realtek drivers then the APU will be bypassed and all effects done using the CPU with the usual limitations (number of voices etc). If you have a board without the APU for now it may be better to make use of the realtek drivers otherwise use the nvidia ones.
See this image designed by Doc OC:
Note: the S/PDIF output can carry other types of signals than the two listed above. Mainly, it can copy any kind of digital audio off a DVD and pass it on unchanged. See Q15 for more info about this.
_____________
Q13: How can I get the best sound setup in my games?
A: Now this is a complicated question due to the sheer number of games, engines and interfaces out there - along with some propriety technologies thrown in for good measure.
OpenAL games: eg. Unreal 2 and UT2k3
For these the best way to set it up is to look for the ini file for the game, open it up and look for the audio section. Find the line that says 'usedefaultdriver' and change it from true to false. Also set EAX to false and set max voices to 64 (although it is highly unlikely the game will be able to generate that many in the current age). Finally ensure 3dsound is true
Then (to make sure this works) rename the file defopenal.dll to anything else so the program cannot find it. This will make sure it uses the Nvidia openal implementation rather than the wrapper creative supply to the game developers and ensures the best match with our hardware.
Miles Audio Engine: This has a section of it's own although it is common to many current sound engines in games. Quite often the game (particularly older ones) will hijack your speaker settings and reset them to either 2-channel or 4-channel. This is a windows/game implementation problem. The current solution is just to alt-tab or ctrl-esc out of the game... open the control panel.... set the speakers correctly... return to game. I know it is annoying but it is something that is being worked on and NV have said it is in their task list for upcoming drivers to find a way to implement speaker 'locking'
EAX: Now I know this is the bugbear for the majority of users. In theory the licencing surrounding direct3d allows for a EAX/EAX2 implementation.... however Creative have never been totally open for the API and even their drivers as trouble with EAX settings at times. With every driver this is something that NV are trying to improve but remember due to the nature of EAX (ie it is still Creative's propriety API) new games are likely to have initial problems until NV can implement a bug fix. The Soundstorm APU has more than enough power to do even better than EAX-HD for environmental effects but licencing prevents EAX-HD being implemented. Since the NV driver is doing some funky things behind the scenes for audio placement using the soundstorm anyway the chances are you will currently get the best sound for your games if you disable EAX and just use directsound3d for now. (certainly GTA-VC is best with this at the moment.)
_____________
Q14: Will there be a standalone Soundstorm card?
A: Now there are two issues at hand here. The feasability with regards to the bandwidths involved and the desireablity of removing one of teh most attractive aspects of the Nforce board and thus allowing it to work on alternative manufacturers' boards. For the former until PCI-express comes along next year it is not feasable. The bandwidths involved are 200MB/s plus with 64 3D voices, environmental effects, 256 2D voices, etc etc all going on and thus not possible over the current PCI bus. The latter issue therefore need not yet be discussed. The mobo scene may be very different next year when it is no longer a major issue. The other reason PCI-express instead of PCI is required for this is down to latency. The PCI bus gives each item an equal chance... the PCI-express is isosynchronous and allows data as needed... of course the current dedicated hypertransport link means as close to zero latency as possible.
_____________
Q15: How do I get DTS, DTS-ES, DD, DD-EX from my DVDs to my amp?
A: Now although the APU cannot decode any of these itself and cannot encode anything but DD itself any pre-encoded bit-stream can be redirected straight to the SPDIF out for external decoding. How this is done depends on the program but for the common ones:
WinDVD/PowerDVD - check first of all that you have a version that can do multichannel audio and can do SPDIF out. If you have this version of the software then check the audio optins for the program for a SPDIF option.
DIVXs/Xvids/etcs - The AC3Filter codec is used for this. Look in control panel for the options for it and set speakers to SPDIF and sample to PCM float. That should give the best output.
NOTE HOWEVER: The suggestions above are for those using SPDIF to a suitable set of speakers or amp that can cope with DTS etc. Otherwise you will need to set the appropriate options in the program to give multichannel analog audio.
_____________
Q16: Why did Nvidia go with poor realtek codecs on an enthusiast board?
A: They didn't. The reference board they originally produced featured a far superior sigmatel codec. The board manufacturers were cost-cutting with the realtek codec. If you want to get around this with your analog speakers see below.
_____________
Q17: I have a set of analog only speakers but want a digital connection because of the onboad DAC quality and/or the convenience of easier cabling... how can I get this?
A: Two ways to go....
1. Buy new speakers
2. Get a Soundblaster Extigy cheap from ebay or somewhere. This does have very good DACs and can do DD decoding. It also has a AC3 compatible SPDIF input. So use it standalone without connecting it to your usb ports... no creative drivers and much better sound quality.
_____________
Q18: Can I use the APU and another soundcard at the same time?
A: Yes, you can. Just install the add-on card in a system with the APU already configured. Both soundcards will be available in Windows. I have seen a system running three soundcards trouble-free this way.
Some software (good software
) gives you a list of all your soundcards on the options screen, and you can choose which soundcard you want to use. By far the most software, however, simply uses the Preferred Device. You can configure the Preferred Device on the Audio tab of the Sounds and Multimedia properties in the Windows Control Panel.
_____________
Q19: When I play a stereo source, the sound is mirrored to my rear channels. Can I get rid of that?
A: The new NForce control panel will give you a GUI option to disable mirroring. Until that gets released, you can use this fix that Mr.Mag!K found out:
Open RegEdit and search for ReplicateWaveFormatExStereoPcm. It should be in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\
{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001\Settings\APU\GlobalVolume
(the 0001 part may differ, its the one for 'NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio')
Setting ReplicateWaveFormatExStereoPcm to 0 disables rear channels in stereo.
Note: use caution when editing your registry.
_____________
Q20: After i've installed new drivers, ive lost my centre channel, how can i get it back?
A: Click start>run>regedit>find>"createcenter">change to 1> reboot
Forum Links:
What is SPDIF?
_____________
P.S. This is a work in progress........ Please post ideas for the FAQ in the discussion thread. This will remain locked to keep it clean.
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Jimbob0i0 - Moderator
- Posts: 1777
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