SPDIF disables itself overnight

[crawfish]

I installed the drivers for the ECS mobo from their included disc but don't recall what or how many different drivers there were.

If I want to try using the Microsoft audio driver do I just uninstall the Via audio driver? Or will that leave me with no audio driver?

If you uninstall the VIA driver, Windows should reconfigure automatically and use the Microsoft driver. As a rule, I don't install anything off the discs that come with motherboards. The driver contents are always outdated, and the rest of it is typically destabilizing crapware.

[Mike88]

I don't have any direct experience with Catylyst 12.8 yet, but this statement sounds similar to what you describe.

Audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV Is switched off/on

Have you looked into 12.8? yet http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... Notes.aspx

I did not see HD 6450 in the list. Also which audio was being switched off, the video card's or the motherboard's?

[Mike88]

I installed the drivers for the ECS mobo from their included disc but don't recall what or how many different drivers there were.

If I want to try using the Microsoft audio driver do I just uninstall the Via audio driver? Or will that leave me with no audio driver?

If you uninstall the VIA driver, Windows should reconfigure automatically and use the Microsoft driver. As a rule, I don't install anything off the discs that come with motherboards. The driver contents are always outdated, and the rest of it is typically destabilizing crapware.

Initially without any drivers the Windows Experience Index was 1.0. I then installed whatever drivers were on the disc & the WEI jumped to 5.0. I then installed an Intel driver that showed up in the Windows update & the WEI dropped slightly to 4.7. I've read one should use the vendor's drivers not "generic" ones from Intel or such. So I rolled back to the one that was on the disc, but IIRC that must have been a video driver. Since everything was working fine I left everything alone.

Regarding the SPDIF problem I don't know which is the cause & which is the effect. Is the mobo kicking out its SPDIF audio since it knows there is a video card, or is the HD6450 telling the mobo to disable to SPDIF since the HD6450 presumes one must be wanting to use HDMI audio?

Just thinking about it, where do you find the chipset driver in Device Manager?

[crawfish]

I installed the drivers for the ECS mobo from their included disc but don't recall what or how many different drivers there were.

If I want to try using the Microsoft audio driver do I just uninstall the Via audio driver? Or will that leave me with no audio driver?

If you uninstall the VIA driver, Windows should reconfigure automatically and use the Microsoft driver. As a rule, I don't install anything off the discs that come with motherboards. The driver contents are always outdated, and the rest of it is typically destabilizing crapware.

Initially without any drivers the Windows Experience Index was 1.0. I then installed whatever drivers were on the disc & the WEI jumped to 5.0. I then installed an Intel driver that showed up in the Windows update & the WEI dropped slightly to 4.7. I've read one should use the vendor's drivers not "generic" ones from Intel or such.

You do need to install drivers, but like I said, the ones that come on motherboard CDs are always out of date. You should always start with the current Intel chipset driver first thing after installing Windows. Then I do the appropriate Intel "Rapid Storage" or whatever they're calling it these days. Then video card. Then whatever else needs to be done, but never audio, as the Realtek, VIA, etc drivers add nothing useful for my purposes, and the built-in Windows driver works fine for S/PDIF. Motherboard vendors generally aren't in the business of making mobos that only work with special drivers, and in fact, I'd avoid such a vendor as I wouldn't want to be at its mercy for the lifetime of the board. Exceptions may include certain laptop drivers, but by and large, you're much better off installing current, maintained drivers downloaded from the actual manufacturers, which by and large are simply later versions of the ones that came with your motherboard, video card, etc.

Regarding the SPDIF problem I don't know which is the cause & which is the effect. Is the mobo kicking out its SPDIF audio since it knows there is a video card, or is the HD6450 telling the mobo to disable to SPDIF since the HD6450 presumes one must be wanting to use HDMI audio?

I really don't know how the two things may interact.

Just thinking about it, where do you find the chipset driver in Device Manager?

If you mean the Intel chipset driver, there's no single entry for it. You'll find evidence of it though in updated names for things like the USB controllers. If it's been installed, there should also be a log file in C:\Intel.

[Crash2009]

I don't have any direct experience with Catylyst 12.8 yet, but this statement sounds similar to what you describe.

Audio is no longer disabled if the connected HDTV Is switched off/on

Have you looked into 12.8? yet http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... Notes.aspx

I did not see HD 6450 in the list. Also which audio was being switched off, the video card's or the motherboard's?

I was just over at AMD looking at some driver choices for mine. I can use just about any version. Your 6450 is quite special, Have you looked into Catylyst 11.8 as of yet?

The link below mentions 11.1, 11.8, and 12.6

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/ ... iew.aspx#4

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... Notes.aspx

[Crash2009]

Have you tried this yet?

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... Sound.aspx

[Mike88]

My head is spinning. So I have a choice of updating the mobo sound driver from the vendor or from Via. And/or updating the video card's sound driver from AMD. As mentioned I frequently hear one should use the vendor's driver because they may have modified things to work with their product. In fact ECS, the mobo vendor states this. Since that didn't work they said to try Via's driver.

I do have Windows 7 sound set to SPDIF as shown above. Interesting thing is that makes no difference. Originally I never did that & SPDIF still worked. And it still makes no difference, as long as SPDIF is set to default in the Via audio deck.

So far SPDIF has been working properly the last few times I woke up the HTPC, so I'm holding off making any changes. I was going back & forth with some settings & maybe/hopefully something got reset in the process. I enabled the AMD audio in Device Manager & in Windows Sound selected AMD. I then disabled AMD in Device Mgr & was curious what it would default to in Windows Sound - Via Speakers or Via SPDIF. It defaulted to Via SPDIF. I then enabled AMD in Device Mgr & SPDIF remained the default in Windows Sound. And I kept checking and/or changing the Via audio deck to SPDIF. I left it that way & it's been working, knock on wood.

I'll just have to wait & see what happens the next time I wake up the HTPC.

[Mike88]

The ECS audio driver worked for 3 times when I woke up the PC. But my luck did not last because last night the SPDIF was disabled again in Via.

I did as crawfish suggested. I was ready to uninstall the Via driver but rolled back the driver first. I was curious if it could be rolled back twice in order to get the Microsoft driver. I thought one rollback would give me the previous Via driver but it brought up the Microsoft version.

At this point I left both the AMD & MS enabled in Device Manager just to see what happens. In Windows Sound I selected the only SPDIF which was the MS version. So far it works but again I just did this.

The Via audio panel is now gone. Via cannot disable SPDIF because Via is no longer there. We’ll see how well this works.

This brings up a question. What is the purpose of installing Via or any other audio driver if Microsoft already has one in Windows? IOW what enhancements or improvements would a 3rd party driver be expected to add?

[crawfish]

This brings up a question. What is the purpose of installing Via or any other audio driver if Microsoft already has one in Windows? IOW what enhancements or improvements would a 3rd party driver be expected to add?

It depends. Some provide capabilities like DTS Connect[*]. They may have other capabilities like flexible jack detection. ISTR the Realtek drivers provide goofy "hall" and other environmental effects I never used. I never used any of it, and the VIA driver actually caused DRM problems when I installed it three years ago; I could no longer play protected Zune files in Windows Media Player, and I had to reset the DRM to get that back. It was reproducible; install driver, mess up DRM. So I no longer install audio drivers, which I only ever did out of curiosity anyway; they gave me nothing new I could use, and the Microsoft driver works great for S/PDIF to my receiver. (I wised up on Zune, too. )

[*] ISTR Realtek came with DTS:Neo but not DTS:Interactive, and the latter is the thing that interested me. In my gaming system, I use it with my X-FI, and it lets me configure Windows as 5.1 analog but packages the audio as DTS for transport over S/PDIF. This way, games can use the X-FI and EAX effects. I don't know if any motherboard codec is powerful enough to implement this realtime encoding; mine certainly did not implement it. It turns out you wouldn't want it enabled all the time anyway on an HTPC, as it packages everything as DTS, re-encoding lossy to lossy and killing any hope of simple pass-through. I was interested in it because I toyed with getting rid of the X-FI and dedicated gaming PC but still wanted 5.1 audio in older games when using S/PDIF. I gave up on that idea.

[barnabas1969]

The ECS audio driver worked for 3 times when I woke up the PC. But my luck did not last because last night the SPDIF was disabled again in Via.

I did as crawfish suggested. I was ready to uninstall the Via driver but rolled back the driver first. I was curious if it could be rolled back twice in order to get the Microsoft driver. I thought one rollback would give me the previous Via driver but it brought up the Microsoft version.

At this point I left both the AMD & MS enabled in Device Manager just to see what happens. In Windows Sound I selected the only SPDIF which was the MS version. So far it works but again I just did this.

The Via audio panel is now gone. Via cannot disable SPDIF because Via is no longer there. We’ll see how well this works.

This brings up a question. What is the purpose of installing Via or any other audio driver if Microsoft already has one in Windows? IOW what enhancements or improvements would a 3rd party driver be expected to add?

I would suspect the VIA audio panel is changing it somehow. The only difference between Microsoft's driver and the one from VIA/ECS is that the one from VIA comes with the crapware VIA audio panel. There is no reason why you need the VIA audio panel... Windows can handle this task just fine.

The Microsoft driver would have originated at VIA... and was tested by Microsoft to be WHQL compliant. The driver from VIA may or may not be a newer one, and may even have some bugs that the Microsoft one does not have.

[crawfish]

I would suspect the VIA audio panel is changing it somehow. The only difference between Microsoft's driver and the one from VIA/ECS is that the one from VIA comes with the crapware VIA audio panel. There is no reason why you need the VIA audio panel... Windows can handle this task just fine.

The Microsoft driver would have originated at VIA... and was tested by Microsoft to be WHQL compliant. The driver from VIA may or may not be a newer one, and may even have some bugs that the Microsoft one does not have.

Actually, Windows comes with one HD Audio driver that works with all the codecs that implement that standard, whether they be from VIA, Realtek, Intel, Creative, etc. It's not like the video drivers, for which Windows does come with drivers supplied by ATI and Nvidia (albeit old ones). An audio driver supplied by a vendor would tend to replace the Microsoft driver.

[Mike88]

crawfish,

Thanks again for the suggestion to just use the MS driver. So far it's been working great.