Audio issues

[microfox]

Hi

I have not been here for quite a long time as everything has been going great with the different builds of Beyond TV, I have installed in the last few years.

Two days ago, one of my HD went down the toilet and I had to reinstall Windows XP and most of my other softwares. When I tested Beyond TV, I was faced with a few audio issues..

First, I must say that when I run the setup wizzard, everything is perfect ( I should know, I have tried running it at least 5 times).

Now, the issues !!!

At different times (but not always) when Beyond TV starts (manually or not), it mutes my Line in tab in the Sound mixer and I have to manually, "un-mute it".

Most of the time (but not always) one can hear an echo as every word that is being spoken is repeated. The second time it is heard, it's in synch with the dialog. This situation is very annoying but the echo can only be heard when watching live TV and not in a recorded show.

Finally, the last of my problems (and also, the latest) has to do with the fact that contrary to what it's always been, you can hear the sound when a recording is under way. It's easy enough to shot down the amplifier but I'd prefer it would not be this way.

If anyone can shed some light on these issues, I would certainly appreciate it.

[Bigbird999]

micro
Let me guess, when you reformatted, you downloaded the latest drivers for your TVW Pro.

Back around driver version 6.1 ATI changed the WDM drivers and made the audio pass through the PCI bus digitally. So you don't need that little black cable from your TVW to your sound card. If you have it connected, you are probably getting sound by both routes (digital and analog) , hence the echo. Also the two modes fight about who is boss hence the mute issue. Try disconnecting the audio cable, and if it still doesnt work properly, revert to an older driver that doesn't have the onboard audio and connect analog sound in.

BB

[microfox]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

micro
Let me guess, when you reformatted, you downloaded the latest drivers for your TVW Pro.

Back around driver version 6.1 ATI changed the WDM drivers and made the audio pass through the PCI bus digitally. So you don't need that little black cable from your TVW to your sound card. If you have it connected, you are probably getting sound by both routes (digital and analog) , hence the echo. Also the two modes fight about who is boss hence the mute issue. Try disconnecting the audio cable, and if it still doesnt work properly, revert to an older driver that doesn't have the onboard audio and connect analog sound in.

BB

Thanks for your answer BigBird.

You are right, I did download the latest drivers when I reinstalled XP. I tried removing the black audio cable but then, there was no sound at all.

I did notice one thing, though. When I tried using ATI's multimedia Center ( that thing, I really hate) there were no problem whatsoever.

Tomorrow, I try removing the drivers and install those that came on the CD when I first got the card.

[Bigbird999]

Let us know how it works out. Sometimes it is hard to roll back ATI drivers as the newer ones keep loading. If this happens, download and run DriverCleaner to completely remove all of the ATI drivers then load the ones from your CD.

For the future, a disc Image of yor OS drive is your best friend when something like this happens. 5 min to restore everything.

BB

[microfox]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

Let us know how it works out. Sometimes it is hard to roll back ATI drivers as the newer ones keep loading. If this happens, download and run DriverCleaner to completely remove all of the ATI drivers then load the ones from your CD.

For the future, a disc Image of yor OS drive is your best friend when something like this happens. 5 min to restore everything.

BB

I uninstalled the WDM drivers and installed the drivers that are on the CD I got with the card, two years ago. What I had not notice is they are the same drivers, dating back to 2003.

Consequently, I'm stuck with the same problem except it apparently does not mute anything, anymore. As Bigbird mentioned, I probably hear the audio both from the digital and from the analog sources. I would not know where it gets the digital audio since I removed my cable box some time ago and has only the analog input, connected to the TV Tuner card.

At least, the recorded shows are ok, even if I do hear the audio while recording which was not the case, before I had to reinstall Windows.

The problem seems related to Beyond TV since everything is fine when I use ATI's software. The only thing that is not fine with it is that I can't stand it.

[Bigbird999]

When I say digital, I mean that the audio capture is digital via the PCI bus from the tuner, rather than via the analog (little black wire) from the tuner to the line in of the sound card. I think you are still getting sound from both sources and since the sources take different route to the sound card audio out, there is an echo.

Did you use driver cleaner? When you go to device manager sound and multimedia, what devices do you see? Do you see 5 WDM drivers? I suspect that you still have a mixture of drivers installed.

Try this. Start up your ATI MMC right click on the ATI screen and select setup, click on the display tab and run the initialization wizard. If you come to a screen asking you to connect the audio cable and then select the sound source, then you have the older drivers. If you can disconnect the audio cable and still get sound, you have both drivers but if you don't get these screens, then you have the new drivers. I had the same thing happen and it drove me crazy.

BB

[microfox]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

Did you use driver cleaner? When you go to device manager sound and multimedia, what devices do you see? Do you see 5 WDM drivers? I suspect that you still have a mixture of drivers installed.

Try this. Start up your ATI MMC right click on the ATI screen and select setup, click on the display tab and run the initialization wizard. If you come to a screen asking you to connect the audio cable and then select the sound source, then you have the older drivers. If you can disconnect the audio cable and still get sound, you have both drivers but if you don't get these screens, then you have the new drivers. I had the same thing happen and it drove me crazy.

BB

In the device manager, I see:

ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Capture
ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Crossbar
ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Tuner (Philips 1236 MK3)

Using the initialization wizard in MMC, I was asked to connect the output of the external cable to the audio line in of the soundcard. Then, I was asked to select the audio line in from the input list.

According to your post that would mean I have the older drivers. I also tried to remove the audio cable and I had no sound, at all.

What I don't understand is why this sound issue is only showing with Beyond TV ? Both MMC and Beyond TV use the same WDM drivers. Right ? Furthermore, I fail to see what's different in this Windows install and the previous one. Same software, same drivers...

[Bigbird999]

I'm stumped. When I had a similar issue, I had a mixture of drivers and removing all of them and reinstalling solved the echo problem. But come to think of it the problem was not in BTV alone, it affected ATI MMC too.

Since it is only affecting BTV it must be a setting of some kind. Is it possible that you selected multiple or the wrong audio device when you ran BTV wizard?

Apart from that I am out of ideas.

BB

[microfox]

I wrote tech support about it and keep my fingers crossed. Maybe they will come up with a solution.

Thanks Bigbird for your help.

[microfox]

Please someone lock me in a rubber room.....

Today, no more audio problem so far... and unless I was sleepwalking, I didn't attempt to fix anything on my PC, last night or earlier today.

Very weird indeed...unless I accidently fixed the problem when I used MMC's initialization wizard, following Bigbird's suggestion ?

[Bigbird999]

BB would like to take credit for his in depth knowledge and superior technical skills but he doesn't know what he did.

This is the point where you and down to the ATI driver gods and make a disc image so you can get back to where you are now.

With ATI drivers, and for that matter, PVR software in general, you can go through the install, remove, reinstall, reformat procedure several times and then for some inexplicable reason all of a sudden, it just works. Then just as suddenly they quit working. That is why why I am running a, going on, 3 year old windows installation. Everytime I decide to do a fresh install I end up in driver hell and can't get all the hardware and software that I had before working. So I bail and restore my old image.

BB

[microfox]

I, too, am a big fan of imaging my C drive. In fact I used to do it once a week. Now that my PC is used strictly as a PVR and I spend most of my computing time on my Mac, I only do it once a month.

And I always keep a few images back, just in case. For some reason, when I reinstalled Windows, my restore would not work properly and I had to start from scratch.

Now, that everything seems in order and that most of essential stuff is installed, I'll image my C drive, later tonight.