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I have two PCs with Realtek HD audio chipsets on the motherboard. One is an ALC882M, the other an ALC883.The one on ALC882M is currently running Vista, but was previously running XP. I seem to recall on Realtek drivers up to 1.54 did not support SPDIF output at frequencies other the 48kHz (but will support 44.1,48 and 96 on Vista).
However, the one with ALC883 will support SPDIF at 44.1, 48, 96, 192 kHz on driver version 1.61.
I'm curious, since both chips appear to have very similar specs (apart from lack of Dolby Digital Live support on the ALC883).
I'm curious - does Dolby Digital Live (whether or not it is enabled) limits SPDIF output to 48kHz on the XP drivers? That seems like a curious restriction to me.
Also, under both XP and Vista (on both chipsets) the DirectKS driver seems to be limited to 16 bits only, even though the chipset itself is capable of 24-bit.
Does anyone else have experience with Realtek chipsets and drivers? Specifically, ability to support higher that 16-bit on DirectKS and ability to support other than 48kHz on SPDIF?
Follow Ups:
Just this past weekend I was installing Windows XP on a
machine with an Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, containing
an on-board Realtek ALC882M HD audio chip.I tried Realtek's Release 1.51 and Release 1.57 driver
installers, as well as (per ThomasPf's recommendations a few
days ago for getting "bit-perfect" S/PDIF out of a Realtek-equipped
motherboard) the older Release 1.31 installer.In no case was I able to change the sampling rate to be
other than 48 kHz in the control-panel app.(I suppose this might be a limitation of Asus' implementation
rather than the Realtek chip itself, if the chip is getting
a clock input from an external oscillator.)
On my Acer TM8200 notebook I can select the S/PDIF output frequency and I selected 44.1 for the bit perfect test.I am not sure what the differecnes between all these chips are and how that limits what a specific driver revision can do but common sense would lead me to believe that newer chips probably only will work with newer drivers.
Cheers
On ALC883, I can select between 44.1, 48, 96, 192kHz on SPDIF out, and I'm wondering whether that's something new introduced in this version, or reflects differences between chipsets (ALC883 vs ALC882M).I'm suspecting the latter, but it would be nice if it was the former.
Also wondering if you can confirm that the Realtek driver in DirectKS mode only works at 16-bit and not 24-bit (on XP or Vista)? I'm not sure how you can easily test that, but Sonar for example complains if I try to open a WDM/KS connection at anything other than 16-bits.
Well, I **finally** got around to trying these experiments.
I downloaded and installed the Realtek Driver Release 1.61
and installed it on the machine with the Asus P5W DH Deluxe
motherboard.The information display panel (brought up by clicking the 'i' button)
in the Asus Sound Manager application) now reads:Audio Driver Version: 5.10.0.5377
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
Audio Controller; HD Audio
Audio Codec: ALC882Also in the Asus Sound Manager, on the S/PDIF Settings
screen, the Output Sampling Rate section still only shows
48 kHz as an option.Now, as far as bit-depth is concerned, I performed the following
test (aided by the fact that this machine, in addition to the
on-board Realtek, **also** has two PCI sound cards: a
Creative X-Fi **and** and an E-MU 1212M):======================
Part 1. X-Fi output to E-MU 1212M input:
I set up Winamp 5.33 Lite with the following options:
General Preferences/Playback: Allow 24 bit and Use Dither both checked.
Plug-ins/Output: HQSoftProc Software Resampling v4.6 Pro (out_HQSP_Resampling.dll)
The latter configured to use:
Output BitResolution: 32
Enable resampling checked
Kernel precision: 150
Target resampling samplerate: 48000
Winamp output plugin used: DirectSound output v2.46 (out_ds.dll)
The **latter** configured to use: SB X-Fi Audio (9880)
Hardware acceleration and volume control disabled.I connected the S/PDIF optical out of the X-Fi to the
optical input of the E-MU 1212M. E-MU PatchMix was set
to use S/PDIF on the optical input, and to use a 48 kHz
internal sampling rate. The PCI Card S/PDIF L/R input strip
was given a Send to ASIO IN 1/2 - HOST.Started playback of a playlist of 16-bit/44.1 kHz WAV files
in Winamp ("Agnetha & Frida - The Voice of ABBA", FWIW ;-> )Fired up WaveLab 5 with Options/Preferences/Audio Card set
to Playback/Record: E-DSP ASIO (9C00). Turned on Live Input
and the bit-depth meter in WaveLab, and saw 24 bits active.Result: 24 bits active
======================
Part 2. Realtek output to E-MU 1212M input
I used the same configuration as above (including the
48 kHz software resampling in Winamp), **except** that:
A) The Winamp DirectSound output device was set to Realtek HD Audio output
B) The optical cable was reconnected from the optical out of the Realtek
to the optical input of the E-MU 1212M.Again, I fired up WaveLab 5 (using E-DSP ASIO) and turned on
Live Input and the bit-depth meter.Result: 16 bits active
======================
Bummer all around! Oh, well.
Oh, and FWIW, in Part 1 above, the X-Fi was in Audio Creation Mode
with a Master Sampling Rate of 48 kHz.
Looks like Realtek driver capabilities are dependent on the chipset, and the driver itself is limited to 16-bits.That's a real shame.
Have you tried switching the HD audio driver from the Realtek driver to the generic Microsoft UAA driver? [Go to Device Manager, right click on audio device, select update driver, then choose the generic Microsoft UAA driver instead of Realtek]
I might try this on my PC with ALC883 and see if that enables 24-bit output. From memory, this did not work on Vista, but might work on XP.
> Have you tried switching the HD audio driver from
> the Realtek driver to the generic Microsoft UAA driver?
> [Go to Device Manager, right click on audio device,
> select update driver, then choose the generic
> Microsoft UAA driver instead of Realtek]I tried this, but there doesn't seem to be a Microsoft UAA
driver specifically for the ALC882.I tried installing the "Microsoft UAA Function Driver for
High Definition Audio - Realtek 880/860", but got the
"Cannot Start this Hardware" [This device cannot start. (Code 10)]
error message.The only other available Microsoft UAA drivers for Realtek
are for the 260, 261, and 280.
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