My powered home-theatre almost killed me, and it's due to bad drivers

Hardware
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Hi all,

This is a cautionary tale of switching to untested, or better phrased as hardware that wasn’t fully burned in or tested over a long period of time. I sold a GTX1070 that was in the Threadripper 1950X rig and decided to route the video and TOSLINK (optical) audio over to my most recent build, an Intel i7-11700K with the Asus ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WiFi 6E LGA 1200.

In Win10 the SPDIF audio appears as “Realtek XXX” something. No matter. So here’ I’m playing Plex with system volume at 100%, and my Yamaha amp at ~ -2dB and I’m watching “Yellowstone”.

I had only just switched over the day before, and placed Plex (running in Chrome) as paused. Went to the toilet, made some espresso in the kitchen came back.

…and hit play.

The most deafening possible 130-140dB of screeches and thankfully I was quick enough to mouse-click pause again.

Headache kicked in - jumped and killed the Yamaha amp and turned off the powered amp as well. Front standing speakers are 200W RMS, centre speaker is 150W bi-amped (via dual-mono blocks).

I decided to switch the GTX1080 Ti FTW3 EVGA back over to the tried and tested TR system, which has been in use for over a year and I’ve NEVER once had this issue.

TL;DR make sure you install good drivers and make sure you run a trusted system when powering anything as dangerous as a home-theatre setup. Thankfully I live to breathe another day and my hearing is “ok”.

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Call me old fashion, but the Big Red hardware slider in the pic is the only thing I trust between my audio sources and my powered speakers…

I always set the digital audio output to 100% and go from there…

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I need something similar with TOSLINK input as well? What can you recommend?
Right so I just need a decent DAC and a something to act as a the master ‘control’. That said, what I’m ideally looking for is an automated solution.

Something similar to an Op-amp feedback follower that checks the analog voltage, and if it moves past a critical threshold, it cuts the signal going into the AVR. Has anyone come across such a thing?

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Go figure, this was an issue for others on this mainboard. There are new drivers out though Rog Strix Z590-E Gaming Wifi sound issue

Someone even recorded it Asus Z590-E mb optical output sound issue - YouTube

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(working on the assumption you’re watching movies and want audio fidelity and insane volumes)

pro-audio has solutions to that problem, called “limiters” - it won’t mute a signal, but you can set the maximum level of a signal. great when the lead guitarist stomps on a pedal and is suddenly 10dB louder in the middle of a song.

BUT it’s going to ruin dynamics in movies if you’ve an explosion that’s coming out at -0dB and your limiter is set to -10dB it’ll limit the level and the explosion won’t sound as explosiony.

AND I’m not sure if a pro-audio mixer will keep a 5.1 audio stream in tact, you might end up with stereo coming out the other side. I’m 90% certain there are no 5.1+ channel mixers available outside of a full scale dolby mastering studio (someone, please prove me wrong)

But if you’re just after maximum volume in two channels, A decent audio interface is definitely what you want, and by “decent” i mean “not the on-board thing that was included to tick off a feature on the list” - something from a pro-audio supplier - if they sell 1-2-3-thousand watt (RMS) amplifiers and speakers, they probably sell decent audio interfaces - there’s a big difference in design goals between sending one home user deaf and deafening 10,000 people at a concert!

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As far as DACs go, I’ve been using these in the past
https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1

So I would need to include a limiter on the analogue output, which is essentially the “pre-amp” stage on the AVR as its input. Do you have links to any specific limiters I could look at?

Thanks.

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no recommendations sorry the limiter on my big system (pure stereo) is built into this fellow: Behringer | Product | DEQ1024

and on my little system (denon 5.1 AVR), i just deal with the occasional hiccup, chaotic DTS passthru is preferable to controlled stereo

the little amp turns on at -35dB and only needs to go up when I’m watching movies, otherwise -35 is loud enough for most circumstances, and is alarming but not damaging to me or the equipment if i do get pops/clicks/static unexpectedly

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Right, so with movies (through Plex) sometimes I need to crank the Yamaha to 0 or -1dB, but of course the floorstanders are powered to their max capable power limit, as is the centre speaker. So any hiccups whilst a movie is playing (or paused and unpaused) will shock the bejesus or cause bleeding ears.

One potential fix, is to run this analog signal through a mixer and make sure to attenuate it during breaks/pausing but it’s not a fool proof system.

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pretty much - although I’ve never noticed audio glitches during playback, usually only when the playback is starting/resuming - with something like MadMatt’s mixer above, just pause, knock the fader down, and then unpause and (gently) move the fader back up when you’re ready for noise again

i did a little bit of PA work in my younger years (review: good fun, bad pay), being in the habit of muting things you don’t want making noise is something you learn pretty quick, and is a good habit to have when you’ve a setup like yours that can actually damage your hearing if it faults.

so yeah, all of this is to say folllow MadMatt’s advice and get something with a physical volume knob between your inputs and amplifiers haha

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How come you are using spdif to connect to your home cinema?

HDMI has been the standard for over a decade and is miles better (technically if not necessarily perceptually…)

Only problem is the escalator of new HDMI standards (3d, 4k, 4k60, 8k etc) all needing new kit, although running from a pc you can just have two hdmi connections, one to display and one to amp.

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And here I was thinking this would be a tale of burning electronics and potential electrocution.

Glad it wasn’t.

I hope there is no ear damage.

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It seems you already know the answer! I can’t speak for OP’s reasons, but I’m using optical into my home cinema amp because my gfx card only has one HDMI out, and the only “issue” with the amp is that it can’t do >1080p60. a $20 optical cable solves the problem, and is $20.

Dolby Digital / DTS / AC3 over HDMI is still compressed audio, exactly the same as the audio signal inside the spdif connection. it’s not “miles better”, it’s identical for audio delivery. HDMI - Wikipedia

With HDMI you get better video resolutions / refresh rates, ARC / CEC, can daisy-chain a bunch of devices together and can reduce the number of remote controls you need, but none of that effects the audio being delivered to the amplifier.

Yes, DTS-HD / TrueHD are uncompressed so they are be “better”, but you basically need to be playing from a bluray disk to get it, streaming sites still use compressed dolby streams compatible with 1998’s spdif, or worse, are just stereo.

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Even if your GFX card only has one HDMI out, you can potentially adapt a displayport with a DP-HDMI adapter, or use a motherboard HDMI out if you’re on intel… probably $20 for most people too.

With SPDIF you are limited to either uncompressed stereo, or compressed surround sound signals… if you want to game on your home cinema, the value of PCM surround sound should be immediately obvious (I can recall from the old Nforce days with dolby digital live that the quality of audio noticeably changed when you enabled it).

I can’t really fathom why someone that spends a lot of money on their home theatre wouldn’t at least have some blu rays and the potential to play them without compromise, either directly or from rips.

Also, what you are saying about streaming sites isn’t quite true, most of them use Dolby Digital Plus/EAC3 which generally can’t be bitstreamed over SPDIF:

So what you are getting is a somewhat compromised signal, even if, as I mentioned at the time, perceptually the difference is likely to be small.

Atmos is also available on a lot of streaming sites, and again, you’ll need HDMI to use it. Personally I’m still on 5.1 speakers so not an issue for me.

And just as a heads up, you don’t actually need dual HDMI outputs to get HDMI audio from devices/pcs nowadays. I bought one of these a few months ago:

If you have a new TV then you can pipe uncompressed/HD E-ARC audio from the TV into your old amp, or if your TV doesn’t do EARC you can run it in splitter mode and run the video into your TV, and the audio into your amp.

Using this splitter I can get uncompromised video and audio from my 4k Firetv, Roku and laptop - all my devices go into a 5 port HDMI switch, output from that goes into this splitter, one wire goes into TV, one into the amp.

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haha Ruklaw you’ve gone and nerd-sniped me. I have things that I know are >5.1 channels, and surround always works “properly”, I had to work out what was going on!

So I went and downloaded a bunch of the DTS/THX channel identification videos and ran around the room sticking my head next to speakers to see what’s doing what.

it turns out my system is downsampling anything more than 5.1 into 5.1 and sending it to my receiver over spdif. if i feed it stereo, i just get stereo. i live in a pretty small town, my options for cables were spdif, a HDMI I can’t use, or RCA->TRS, so i chose spdif. (there were absolutely no displayport cables in my whole town, i checked!)

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Old school habit, and it’s because the HDMI signal goes to the TV (direct), with the audio source (SPDIF) sent over to the AVR. Sure, I could Just send the entire HDMI through to the AVR direct, and then it would ‘auto’ decode the audio signal.

Since 2005, my AVR’s volume control has been the volume isolator, but yeah, I will be more careful in future :slight_smile:

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Thanks to Matt here, I’ve taken this approach:

  1. Modi DAC from Schiit will take the TOSLINK signal, and output via TISINO RCA to 1/4 Cable, Quarter inch TRS to RCA (1/4 Stereo to 2 RCA) Audio Y Splitter Cable Insert Cable - 10 feet/3 Meters into

  2. Zoom Livetrak L-8 and this will output using another TISINO cable from TRS → RCA (L/R). This will feed into a pre-amp input on the Yamaha AVR.

I went with the Livetrak as I’ve been meaning to get a mixer and this can serve dual purposes as needed.

Thanks!

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I love my livetrak, and am not even a musician, I admit my audio setup is particularly convoluted, but the ability to have multiple outputs and to apply a different mix on each of them has saved me from hardware multiplication problems countless times…
The livetrak has two main outs, that in my case go to a set of ‘desktop’ speakers and eventually to a set of proper speakers when I need louder/am not listening at my desk.

The inputs are my main workstation VM through USB, my gaming VM through 2 inputs, an XLR mic through a dedicated input and various other audio sources using any other of the inputs (kids piano, test hardware, phone out…)
In addition, the l-12 has five more headphones out, and i use one for a pair of wired earphones and one for a Bluetooth transmitter
I can output a different mix on each, and use it daily to have Spotify on mains, teams audio on Bluetooth speakers, and YouTube audio moving between the two …

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I’ll test this l-8 first and what I’ll do is keep this dedicated near the TV/couch.

For my recording stuff, I’ll grab a l-12 and add an Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO Heritage Edition for realtime compression etc.

I’ve been fiddling with OBS for way too long and have had so many issues.

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I am also running a hardware mixer for convenience, and because I do not trust my ears to some software anymore.

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Since you’re going the extra mile, wouldn’t a modius be better? It has xlr balanced outputs that can feed directly into the livetrak …

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