Xonar D2 not decoding HE-AAC or Dolby Digital Bitstream?

Shad

Shad

Shad

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I've just bought a new TV which is hooked up to the SPDIF input on my Xonar D2. Some Freeview HD broadcasts use HE-AAC to encode their 5.1 channel audio streams but unfortunately the Xonar doesn't seem to recognise the stream at all and all I get is silence (or noise with validity check disabled). The manual for the TV states that "Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital and HE-AAC multi-channel are output as Dolby Digital Bitstream" so I'm not sure if that means those streams are transcoded to DD Bitstream or they are passed through as-is.

Either way, I'd quite like to get it working. I believe all of the decoding work is done in software, as opposed to the encoding which is hardware based on the Xonar D2. Could this be a problem fixable with software? If I set the SPDIF output on the TV to PCM then it's all dandy, but only in stereo. I have ffdshow installed if that helps.

Any advice appreciated, this appears to be a common issue with Freeview HD at the moment (although typically with receivers that don't know what to do with HE-AAC).
 
SPDIF input on sound cards cannot accept 5.1, only PCM stereo. There is no sound card currently on sale that I know of that can do this. The X-Fi Elite can but that can only be bought second hand now. It was discontinued a few years ago now.
 
I had to Google that statement because it just sounds so ridiculous that I couldn't believe it. But it seems you're right! The plague that is DRM, discussed in some depth here.

I guess I'll need to buy a receiver/amp that will handle the stream from the TV and run my sound card SPDIF output to that instead?
 
Short of buying a used X-Fi Elite, I don't think there is any way to get Dolby Digital and any other 5.1 audio formats into the PC, then out through the Creative speakers.

If you do consider a AV receiver, then you will have to buy speakers as well. The Creative speakers you have now have their own amplifier in the subwoofer and were not intended to be connected to any other amplifier. Technically you could connect the satellites to a AV receiver, but there would be no way to connect the subwoofer. That would be a hodge podge way of doing things though.

I think your only options are going to be Logitech Z5500 or Z906 speakers. Both have digital connections, and can decode Dolby Digital and DTS. Z906's are not as good as the Z5500's though, which have been discontinued and the Z906's cost more. If you want to utilise Dolby Digital Plus and use 7.1 speakers, then you're going to have to look at getting a AV receiver and a 5.1 speaker package, then adding an extra two speakers as 7.1 speaker packages are very rare at the budget end.
 
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