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I have a problem that I'm hoping someone with more knowledge can shed some light on. I recently received a Razer Goliath 5.1 Soundbar for my birthday, capable of accepting input through Aux, Bluetooth, and Optical cable.
My motherboard is only capable of outputting stereo over SPDIF, so I bought a Sound Blaster Z sound card (which promises 5.1 over optical). Sadly, I've had only headaches and issues since I installed the damned thing.
I've managed to overcome most of the other problems that I've had with the card, however even as I type this out my sound has dropped out almost a dozen times - it simply stops playing through the speakers.
In the beginning I would restart my computer, and things would simply work again. More recently I've discovered that switching the encoder version in the Sound Blaster Z Control Panel to anything else, then back to Dolby Digital is enough to get my sound playing again.
I tried installing the newest drivers for both the card itself, as well as the Sound Blaster Audio Controller, and even newer/older versions of Sound Blaster Z Control Panel; nothing's worked, so I'm hoping you guys may have some insight.
I'm running Windows 10 Pro V. 1803, with all the latest updates; CPU: Intel i7-3770K; Motherboard: Asus Maximus V Gene
1What happens if you use 'no encoder' & let the soundbar do it? – Tetsujin – 2018-08-04T18:30:03.057
@tetsujin - hi, when I disable Dolby Digital in the Sound Blaster Control Panel sound stops playing over the Speakers (Sound Blaster Z) audio device, and instead plays over SPDIF (Sound Blaster Z). Which is fine, except it only outputs 2 channels, not 5.1 (please see the NOTE in the screenshot on clarification on how the software routs sound with/without Dolby enabled). All sound tests through the Control Panel also stop outputting any sound ... – AndreiROM – 2018-08-04T18:42:21.783
OK, that probably reinforces what you said at the beginning of the question - your machine is incapable of outputting 5.1 at all, & is using a bit a a hack to push an undecoded signal to the soundblaster for those specific audio types. You may be hitting a processing bottleneck; the machine is just not capable of even pushing the undecoded signal as fast as required. Not sure there's a lot you can do to overcome that, but let's see if anyone knows better than me [many people do ;-)) – Tetsujin – 2018-08-04T19:18:17.350
@tetsujin - The whole point of this card is (supposedly) to enable me to play 5.1 over optical, which seems to work when Dolby is enabled. I would get it if a bottleneck would cause latency (which there was, but it was mostly resolved with newer drivers), but having the encoding fail altogether, then work again on toggle, seems to me like some sort of software failure. As you said, maybe someone has encountered this sort of issue before – AndreiROM – 2018-08-04T19:39:03.337