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Topic: Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers (Read 528416 times) previous topic - next topic
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Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #125 –
Quote from: Dac on
for some time I used onboard Soundstorm to get it even in Dolby Digital. it works and my Sony STR-DB798QS gets it right, but Soundstorm is very buggy on my Asus MB so it's disabled again...


Try media player classic instead of foobar. Files with the extension .dts are usually decoded by foobar2000 and then sent to the soundcard as PCM.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #126 –
Hi! PC keeps locking up when I try your drivers; everything works fine until the installation - whether manual or with the installer - tries to copy the control panel file. Then it locks. Tried several driver versions (including 1.0.9) and the behavior is identical. Works fine on my htpc though. Any suggestions anyone?

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #127 –
Quote from: landsome on
Hi! PC keeps locking up when I try your drivers; everything works fine until the installation - whether manual or with the installer - tries to copy the control panel file. Then it locks. Tried several driver versions (including 1.0.9) and the behavior is identical.

Hi, you should tell more details about your hardware (mainboard chipset, soundcard model, other PCI devices if any), operating system (version and service pack level) and software that may interfere (e.g., antivirus software).

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #128 –
Quote from: landsome on
Hi! PC keeps locking up when I try your drivers; everything works fine until the installation - whether manual or with the installer - tries to copy the control panel file. Then it locks. Tried several driver versions (including 1.0.9) and the behavior is identical. Works fine on my htpc though. Any suggestions anyone?


I'd like to ask you for the minidumps for further analysis - Windows creates a minidump in C:\windows\minidump each time it crashes with a BSOD.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #129 –
sorry, no minidump (and no bsod either - just plain ole freeze)
it's not really a big issue, since as long as it works on the htpc it's fine [and by the way, thanks for the effort - it's a real money saver]; just curious whether anybody has seen this before

(system: asrock dual-sata2; venice; 2gb; x800xl; prodigy 7.1 [uninstalled, removed, thoroughly cleaned])

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #130 –
one ther question: from the perspective of your drivers, are there any advantages of using an 8768 over a 8738 (digital only)?

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #131 –
Quote from: landsome on
one ther question: from the perspective of your drivers, are there any advantages of using an 8768 over a 8738 (digital only)?

Good question. The only difference I am aware of is that the analog part of the 8768 can handle 88.2kHz / 96kHz streams whereas the analog part of the 8738 is silent at these sample rates.
So if you just want to use the digital part, there aren't any known differences.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #132 –
Hi there,

  I find this project very interesting. I'm currently shopping for a sound card for my HTPC, which will be connected to an external DAC. Could anyone point me to a cheap sound card (author states there are cards for 15usd ) which would work with these drivers? I would also prefer coax over toslink, but will settle for toslink if necessery. Thanks!

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #133 –
I have an incomplete list of supported device on my page - chances are good that you find a supported device when you crosslink their names with a product search engine, e.g. Froogle or eBay or whatever.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #134 –
Nice. I failed to see that list on my previous visits to your site, but it will do the job for my search. Thanks a lot

EDIT: Diamond Xtreme 7.1 ordered for ~30$ CDN. Can't wait to test it with this nice driver

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #135 –
Hi,

I am able to get the driver working on Philips Dynamic Edge CMI8738 via manual installation, if I run setup I get a blank dialogue box with exclamation mark.  Also i noticed that the control panel does not save my settings, and if i open it during playback i get a dialogue box named DirectSoundCreate8() with a message "more data is avaliable".  This is with Windows 2000 and ULI M1575 Southbridge.

Apart from those small problems the driver works well for playback over spdif to my receiver, thanks for developing these drivers it is much appreciated.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #136 –
Quote from: trs on
Hi,

I am able to get the driver working on Philips Dynamic Edge CMI8738 via manual installation, if I run setup I get a blank dialogue box with exclamation mark.  Also i noticed that the control panel does not save my settings, and if i open it during playback i get a dialogue box named DirectSoundCreate8() with a message "more data is avaliable".  This is with Windows 2000 and ULI M1575 Southbridge.

Apart from those small problems the driver works well for playback over spdif to my receiver, thanks for developing these drivers it is much appreciated.


what's the vendor and device ID of the device?

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #137 –
%*WDM_PSC604.DeviceDesc%=PSC60x,    PCI\VEN_13F6&DEV_0111&SUBSYS_060417AB

I think that is correct

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #139 –
Do you know whether anyone is working on any exclusive mode output plugins for Foobar, et cetera, Dogbert?

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #141 –
is it possible to add realtime ac3-encoder to this driver for producing multichannel spdif stream in games and other?
thematrixhasyou

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #142 –
Quote from: vearutop on
is it possible to add realtime ac3-encoder to this driver for producing multichannel spdif stream in games and other?


it is certainly possible since the source code is freely available, but at the present there aren't any encoders publicly available which are fast enough in terms of CPU speed and latency to encode an N channel PCM stream to AC3 in realtime, and I don't have the intention to develop such an encoder.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #143 –
I've found a problem with the 8738 drivers: I often use hibernation (write memory to disk) and when I start the computer again the 8738 output is silent... Only rebooting solves the problem.

This doesn't happen all the time so it may be difficult to reproduce  I've gone back to the Terratec drivers and they always work without any problem...

This problem happens with several driver versions, including the latest one.

Software: XP SP2
Hardware: AMD X4200, ASUS mobo & two soundcards: 8738 & Via envy

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #145 –
Thanks for the quick update Dogbert! 

First tests seem to indicate that everything is working fine now.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #146 –
@Dogbert

Have you taken a look at the aften ac3 encoder? I helped tweaking it a lot speed-wise and I bet it will run nicely in realitme. Just make sure that you don't use threading (increases latency) and set the bitalloc and exponent strategy to simplest. There exists an ALSA aften plugin for realtime encoding in Linux...

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #147 –
Quote from: PrakashP on
@Dogbert

Have you taken a look at the aften ac3 encoder? I helped tweaking it a lot speed-wise and I bet it will run nicely in realitme. Just make sure that you don't use threading (increases latency) and set the bitalloc and exponent strategy to simplest. There exists an ALSA aften plugin for realtime encoding in Linux...


What AC3 encoder? The one from FFmpeg?

The "problem" is that the encoder has to run permanently in kernel space due to the architectural constraints of Windows XP/2000, whereas the ALSA plugins are executed in user mode afaik. Consequently, there are some limitations to obey like maximum execution times, and synchronization issues may arise from that.
sAPO GFX ('system effect audio processing object, global effects') stuff has been introducted in Vista for user mode (?) audio processing - this might be the right place for implementing an AC3 realtime encoder, but I haven't had the time to read up on the documentation from Microsoft to confirm this.

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #148 –
I've just upgraded to Vista and noticed two issues:

Only the wavert driver works, with the regular driver there's no available audio device...?

and

The output is always downsampled to 44.1.

Is this a limitation of the wavert driver? I've set the control panel to allow for all PCM formats up to 96khz and I this worked fine with the same card (Terratec Aureon fun 5.1) and Windows XP.


thanks!

Homebrew CMI 8738 drivers

Reply #149 –
Quote from: wdekler on
Only the wavert driver works, with the regular driver there's no available audio device...?

That's a Vista bug - the interfaces of the old drivers aren't deleted and re-created when the driver is being upgraded. A workaround is described here.

Quote
Is this a limitation of the wavert driver?

That's an intentional design limitation of Vista - the sample rate remains fixed for PCM audio. It can be adjusted ('Advanced' tab), but even if the sample rate of the source and the control panel setting is the same, the audio data is tampered with in some way resulting in the kmixer not being bitperfect anymore. A workaround here is to use non-WaveRT drivers and kernel streaming.