[patricklang]

Here's the results of my experimentation with the Chaintech AV710 with
J.River Media Center. There are good guides out there for getting
good audio out of it with Foobar 2000, but I have not yet found one
for J.River Media Center.

This card is a great buy at $27 shipped (newegg.com). There are
better threads discussing the pros/cons of this card, but in short,
its cheap, can do bit-perfect SPDIF out, and has a very good DAC on
the rear surround output that sounds almost as good as many of the
cards in the $100 range. The other 6 channels use a cheap DAC and are
not particularly good.

Now here's the guide!

Do not use the Chaintech AV710 drivers, instead, get the "VIA Vinyl
Envy24 controllers" driver from: http://www.viaarena.com/ , click
Drivers. I used version 442a, dated 12 January 2005

Install ASIO4ALL - http://www.asio4all.com. Versions 2.4 and 2.5 are verified to work according to this guide

After you have the VIA drivers and ASIO4ALL installed:

Open the "ASIO4ALL Offline Settings" control panel, select "Envy24
Family Audio Controller WDM"

1. Click advanced
2. Drag the "ASIO Buffer Size" bar to 256 samples
3. On my setup, I can use the Hardware Buffer option without issues. If you have trouble such as no sound, pops, or clicks, try with and without the Hardware Buffer option.

Open the VIA Vinyl Audio Control Panel
For simultaneous output on rear surround output and SPDIF (recommended):

1. Choose 2 channel from the buttons at the top
2. Go to Advanced Controls tab
   1. Check Enable Digital Output, and choose PCM Only
   2. Make sure Sample Rate Select > Automatic is checked

In j.river Media Center, go to Tools > Options

1. Go to Playback options
2. Choose Output mode: ASIO
3. Click Output Mode settings
4. Choose ASIO4ALL v2 as the device
5. Set channel offset to 0
6. Click DSP & Output Format
   1. For bitdepth, choose "Source Bitdepth"
   2. For channels, choose "source number of channels"
   3. For Sample rate, choose "Source sample rate"
7. Close Options, and enjoy the music

Alternate for Wolfson DAC without SPDIF:
In VIA Vinyl Control Panel:

1. Choose 8 (7.1) channel from the buttons at the top
2. Go to Advanced Controls tab, make sure Sample Rate Select > Automatic is checked.

In Media Center:

1. Use channel offset 6 instead of 0

Caveats:

1. If the Chaintech is set as your default windows audio device (Start > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices, Audio tab), ASIO playback will stop if a windows sound or other application makes some sound. You will have to pause and resume playback in Media Center to get the music back.
2. You will need to change settings in VIA Vinyl Control Panel to allow AC3 passthru for movies, then change them back before using Media Center again. The SPDIF output must be locked to 48khz for AC3 passthru.

Other Discussions relating to this guide:

1. avsforum - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=525310
2. jriver - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=26694.0

ChangeList
29 Mar 05 - Changed recommended settings to 2 channel instead of 7.1, verified that SPDIF output works to my minidisc (thanks Saulous for the tip

). Added caveats, links to other threads.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Good job! This guide covers a lot that mine is missing. Mainly: ASIO, non-resampled analog output, and J-River Media Center setup. I'll add a link to your guide from mine.

 

[Cyclone]

Very well done. well organized, simple, and yet detailed. thanks, can ASIO support more than one sound stream, i might switch from kernal stream if it can play more than one sound stream. If you dont know what im talking about im asking if i can be playing music on foobar and have a windows beep occur without the music on foobar stopping?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mr.Radar]

ASIO4All essentially just translates ASIO into Kernel Streaming so it's only useful if you have an application that doesn't support Kernel Streaming but does support ASIO and need bit perfect output.

 

[patricklang]

ASIO is designed to lock the card, and essentially bypass the standard windows mixers, etc for recording/monitoring applications. DirectX and WaveOut have much longer latencies, which is very undesirable for professional recording.

ASIO is implemented in many drivers by using kernel streaming, as far as I can tell, this is what most Envy24 boards do. It is minimal effort for the developers. RME, however, does not use kernel streaming and has their own method of moving the bits from the ASIO API's to hardware. They need to support onboard DSP's and some other features that do not fit into the windows driver model supported by Microsoft and utilized by most manufacturers.

In short, ASIO on most cards, whether built-in, or via ASIO4ALL, blocks the card from windows applications. I would recommend using two cards, one for music exclusively (AV710), and another for games, etc (SBLive, Audigy, etc). All of the envy24 boards use sensaura for -software based- 3d game audio support. This puts more load on the CPU, when compared to a creative labs card which moves some of the 3d effect work to the audio card itself.

 

[Saulous]

Patricklang, have you tryed to use Wolfsson Dac with 2-ch mode? I have and it has worked since I bought this card, and I have used only the newest drivers. PCM only and automatic sample rate must be checked. I can use the wolfsson dac with you method, too, and for example if I set from the 8 (7.1) settings the back stereo speakers volume to 50%; then go back to 2ch mode the volume is still at 50%. All other outputs are disabled. Udial.ape and test signals plays as well as with your method, music quality is also the same. The benefit is that this way you don't have to change the channel offset to 6 from asio settings and you can use both spdif and analog wolfson out at the same time (of course not "at the same time"

but that, too, is possible; the dj have used the headphones with that way on our parties

) without changing any settings. For example I use headphones directly from av710->Cmoy->headphones and the speakers are connected to my home theater amp.

 

[patricklang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saulous Patricklang, have you tryed to use Wolfsson Dac with 2-ch mode? I have and it has worked since I bought this card, and I have used only the newest drivers. PCM only and automatic sample rate must be checked. I can use the wolfsson dac with you method, too, and for example if I set from the 8 (7.1) settings the back stereo speakers volume to 50%; then go back to 2ch mode the volume is still at 50%. All other outputs are disabled. Udial.ape and test signals plays as well as with your method, music quality is also the same. The benefit is that this way you don't have to change the channel offset to 6 from asio settings and you can use both spdif and analog wolfson out at the same time (of course not "at the same time" but that, too, is possible; the dj have used the headphones with that way on our parties ) without changing any settings. For example I use headphones directly from av710->Cmoy->headphones and the speakers are connected to my home theater amp.

I just tried 2 channel, high sample 2 channel, and 2+2, none of them output on the wolfson on rear surround out with channel offset 0. Maybe I misunderstood your settings?

Also, ASIO4ALL 2.5 works. No difference with the envy24 as far as I can tell, I think its just bugfixes for some other chipsets.

 

[Saulous]

I use Asio4All 2.5, too and yes it works. You only need to set 2ch mode, enable digital output, set PCM only, and set sample rate to automatic (same as with spdif out). And the channel offset must be 0. Then you hear sound from the black back stereo speaker output of Wolfson dac. I use Winamp 5.08 with the Otachan asioplugin 0.52 + Asio4All 2.5 (all versions of A4All have worked); perhaps you could try with Winamp + asioplugin first to see if it worked with that?

See here http://www3.cypress.ne.jp/otachan/

 

[patricklang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saulous I use Asio4All 2.5, too and yes it works. You only need to set 2ch mode, enable digital output, set PCM only, and set sample rate to automatic (same as with spdif out). And the channel offset must be 0. Then you hear sound from the black back stereo speaker output of Wolfson dac. I use Winamp 5.08 with the Otachan asioplugin 0.52 + Asio4All 2.5 (all versions of A4All have worked); perhaps you could try with Winamp + asioplugin first to see if it worked with that? See here http://www3.cypress.ne.jp/otachan/

It is working now, thanks, I will put this in the guide tonight.

I think I am going to stay with the 7.1 for my own use, this will route regular windows audio to a separate output from my music.

 

[Saulous]

Quote:

Originally Posted by patricklang It is working now, thanks, I will put this in the guide tonight. I think I am going to stay with the 7.1 for my own use, this will route regular windows audio to a separate output from my music.

Damn well that's great if it works like that

. So you have speakers/amp connected to line-out, too and the front output channels are not muted? So when sound comes from for example a Zoom Player or something the music coming from you rear surround Wolfson output will not stop playing like with most people? I use two soundcards so I don't need that option but hey nice to see if it works like that? The channel offset to 6 is the key element here, right? I suppose many people who use the av710 as a primary and only sound card of the comp will benefit from this knowledge.

 

[patricklang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saulous Damn well that's great if it works like that . So you have speakers/amp connected to line-out, too and the front output channels are not muted? So when sound comes from for example a Zoom Player or something the music coming from you rear surround Wolfson output will not stop playing like with most people? I use two soundcards so I don't need that option but hey nice to see if it works like that? The channel offset to 6 is the key element here, right? I suppose many people who use the av710 as a primary and only sound card of the comp will benefit from this knowledge.

Actually, it doesn't work like that as I expected. It seems that when a waveout or directsound app plays something, it hijacks the card from asio4all. Another ASIO app should be able to output to another channel from what I remember, or at least I could with ASIO on the Echo Mia.

Stopping and restarting playback in media center brings the audio back. I switched my windows default audio device back to the onboard sound, so the only thing routing to my AV710 now is j.river via ASIO4ALL.

 

[patricklang]

Ok, the top post is back up to date with Saulous's changes and the caveats I mentioned in the thread.