The VideoLAN Forums

I've been searching through old posts trying to solve my problem with digital output to my receiver. I've tried everything (settings, old/new drivers, old/new releases of vlc, different optical cable), but I can't stop DTS or any ac3 output from skipping terribly.

I'm using the onboard realtek 850 chipset on an asus a8n-sli premium board (nforce 4) running vista. I'm going from my optical output to a denon receiver. Obviously I've tried old and new asus and realtek drivers.

So what soundcard should i get to solve my issues?

If you have "use S/PDIF when available" enabled then you might also want to change this too: Tools > Preferences > (tab) Audio > Output modules > (check the "Advanced options" box) choose "Win32 waveOut extension output", save and restart VLC media player.

right, i tried that as suggested in the older threads i found. I also tried the "dirty" solution, and just about every other combination i could think of.

Ditto here.

I'm getting some skipping on DTS Matroskas.

Downmixed to stereo, the track plays fine, but using DTS over SPDIF immediately results in skipping audio.

The DTS options are sparse, perhaps something else is at work here?

Digital output for audio has some issues in VLC, but without no one fixing them there isn't really any solutions. You can use another media player or encode the audio again. You might also try older versions of VLC (0.82 IIRC).

Well this has nothing to do with VLC but more to do with Microsoft and its DirectX audio drivers. There are some timing issues with the DirectX audio driver so it's sometimes recommended that you use "Win32 waveOut extension output".

It is a bug in VLC (and it affects Waveout also on certain hardware combinations). No other players have this issue and VLC didn't have it before certain version came out.