I’m trying to get an old Windows 10 machine to be an endpoint, using Roon Bridge connected to a receiver via HDMI.
I can get it to play, but am running into a weird issue where it will do either 5.1 or 2.0, but not both.
If I right click on the Windows PC’s volume icon (taskbar, bottom right), I can change “Speaker Setup” to 2.0. If I do that, it works as expected: I can play stereo files but not multichannel. However, if I change “Speaker Setup” to 5.1, I can play multichannel files but (oddly) not stereo files. The error I get in Roon is the “failed to initialize” one.
Setting Roon to have exclusive control or not doesn’t impact this.
You mentioned in another post that this is an Intel Atom-based machine. Is it using Intel SST audio drivers for the HDMI connection? Have you got the latest version of the drivers installed?
Hi Geoff. Thanks for the help. Problem solved, though it wasn’t the drivers.
In case anyone in the future sees this thread:
It was using Intel SST audio drivers, and the latest ones at that. The driver was the latest version downloaded from the company’s web page, and a check with the Intel Driver & Support Assistant confirmed nothing was newer. That said, they’re pretty old drivers - v604.10135.1010.531 dated 5/25/2015 - but it turns out that doesn’t matter.
The solve was in Roon’s Device Setup page. Right below the channel layout setting (where you can tell Roon it’s a 5.1 device) is an option titled “Send stereo/mono content as 5.1”. Switched that to “yes”, and everything works!