I need my Speaker Setup locked in to Dolby Atmos for home theater, please.

[IVHed]

When I select Manage Audio Devices > Sound > Playback > DENON-AVR High Definition Audio Device > Configure > Audio Channels I have to manually select Dolby Atmos for home theater, remind it I have Center-Sub-Side and Rear, not just Rear speakers and that the Front left and right are full range, not the surrounds.

I get tired of having to do this manually when it should remember my selections. Also, on occasion, Windows thinks I don't actually need that setup and reverts to Stereo (more often than not). I have to go back in and select Dolby Atmos for home theater manually. Every. Time.

What I would like is a way to identify which registry entry I need to isolate and run in task manager (for example) that reminds Windows of my actual setup so I can hotkey the task and get on with my movies/games/etc.

I need a way to lock in my choices without spending hundreds of dollars on a keep-alive signal device to fool Windows into leaving my setup alone. This is likely due to the computer being always on but the AVR power cycling or the LG screen using Smart Features that pull audio focus from the PC, bypasses the PC by sending Audio directly to the AVR (eARC, etc).

My PC (Windows 10 Home v10.0.19043 Build 19043), AVR, speakers and RTX 3070 are all Atmos ready and switches formats automatically from 5.1, 7.1 and back to Atmos as the signal dictates and all my digital streams (PCM vs Bitstream) and connections (HDMI 2.1, 8k certified cables, eARC for Dolby Vision, etc) are working fine. What it DOESN'T do is keep Windows from randomly sneaking in a "did you actually mean STEREO?" switcharoo which I aim to prevent if at all possible.

I have found very little in the way of help isolating this in REG and what I did find I couldn't achieve the described effect. I have used automated scripts that open, right click, select, tab up and down, enter, enter, etc., to put things back to Dolby Atmos for home theater but it requires focus and selection that I have to wait for it to finish before I can use my mouse again and it doesn't always work due to the everchanging sound environment that Windows detects and automatically switches for me - no matter what I do to prevent it.

Any info, links, scripts, apps or help pages will be appreciated. I'm very comfortable working with AHK (even tho it's taboo right now and I'm only a beginner coding with it) to achieve this effect but I don't have the necessary DLL calls. I'm also comfortable working with REG edits but again, I don't know which one achieves the entire setup I need to reinforce or the one needed to activate Dolby Atmos for home theater that I can use with Task Manager. I hope to achieve this without upgrading to Windows 11.

NOTE: I do NOT have an issue selecting default devices - never have and doing so does nothing to preserve which speaker setup I prefer and prevent Stereo from even being an option. I only have one Mic and one Audio output anyway so I've nailed the default device thing. It's the desired Speaker setup (no enhancements, only audio channels) I need to get working, keeping, checking and correcting as needed or hotkeyed for my issue to be resolved.

Thank you in advance. If there is a better forum to ask this question please link.

[#2]

Hi! Yeah this is a Microsoft Teams forum :) I suggest searching for hifi forum or similar!

[#3]

@adam deltinger Thank you for the suggestion. I'm trying to find a Microsoft forum to find my answer since the issue is with Microsoft software programming. The audio sites have no solution for less than $1100 and there's no software I can find or programmer that is willing to tackle the issue. If you know of a Microsoft forum you think could discuss this better please link it to me. Otherwise I'll let this fade away on it's own and keep looking. 

[#4]

After receiving an email for me to mark "best answer" I have to decline. I would like to think that Microsoft Teams would have a need for an answer to my query as this is not a need unique to myself. I have come to this realization after months of online research and the number of persons asking for the same feature. So for now, it goes unresolved. Hopefully someone will read this and be able to provide an answer. Referring me to a non-existent M$ forum did not, in fact, solve my query. I'll check back occasionally.

[#5]

@IVHed This is a community forum where people help each other with Microsoft Teams, which is a meeting and collaboration application. It is not the Microsoft team.

[#6]

@IVHed 

I have a very similar situation, and I might have stumbled across a solution to yours.

My issue, I cant get my system to recognize which is the Dolby Atmos speakers?  it plays both the side and rear speakers off the same (rear) speakers, with no way to adjust the Atmos speakers being on top of my FR and FR speakers= Definitive Technologies 9080x. It is driving me nuts.

A possible solution for you; I figured out I have to log out/put my system to sleep/fully shut down the computer before powering down my receiver. Then powering everything back on starting with the receiver. Its the only way I haven't had to reset sound settings each darn time.

Hope I helped, any help in return is appreciated! Ive posted on some hifi forums and no luck yet.

Rob

[#7]

@RoHCo Thank you for replying. Since this post I've tried a couple solutions including a third party audio switcher. Even with that, sometimes when I come back the audio is muted in the active window (game) with no way to unmute it without quitting the app and relaunching. Then other times when the entire computer is muted so interestingly enough, this week I ran the troubleshooter (again) and realized the last two times all it did was stop and restart the audio drivers. Well, I can do that. So I got my hands on this snippet of AHK script and it works just fine.

^+s::
RunWait,sc stop "AudioSrv" ;Stop AudioSrv service.
RunWait,sc start "AudioSrv" ;Start AudioSrv service.
return

Note: While this may work as a standalone AHK script, I'm only quoting the part I added to my existing script so the opening lines and other functionalities in my master script are not shown here. What to put at the start of your personal AHK compilation would need to be researched to match your specific setup and uses. 

[#8]

@IVHed My solution is a program called "Sound Keeper". Download the exe, rename the executable to "all.exe" and you can go to your sound mixer and mute it. The readme is more in-depth, but this is my oversimplification of the process. Keepalive = 1 :) No drop outs. 

For others having issues and you are pulling your hair out because this doesn't work, DDU in safe mode, stay in safe mode after DDU runs, (ensure most settings are enabled in DDU, disable windows updates through DDU), remove all your windows graphics caches in the registry (google removing monitor nvidia graphics profiles in regedit), I went a few steps further in many departments such as uninstalling chipset drivers for the motherboard and audio (onboard audio is disabled in BIOS, but there are still octopus tentacles everywhere wanting to grab an IRQ/MSI it shouldn't or is sharing), run a program called MSI_util_v3 (google) as admin and every line that says MSI or MSI-X is supported, enable MSI. Feel free to explore "max" and "max limit" on your own time, restart after changes to chipset driver removal and MSI (Messaging Signal Interrupt is superior to IRQ) enablement. 

My setup is an MSI (brand, not protocol) Big Bang X-Power II, MSI (brand, not protocol) Geforce 3080 GA102-202-A1 with a flashed vBIOS of a higher tier video card for TDP increase purposes, i7 4930k, 32GB DDR3 RAM. I have two Dell monitors, which adds a layer of complexity as they both are connected via DP 1.4, have output 3.5mm speaker ports, and want to claim ownership of my audio services given even a single drop of blood atomized into the air (Get it, Dolby Atmos, Atomized, eh). 

Returning to the chipset drivers, in safe mode, I actually uninstalled and uninstalled and removed the associated driver to most of the system devices (High Definition Audio Controller is in there, what a

buggah) minus the ones that don't start with "Intel() C600/X79 series chipset xxxxxxxxxxx". I uninstalled every single monitor, all Audio inputs and outputs, all SOund, video and game controllers, I enabled "show disconnected, hidden devices" and removed every single one of those except a choice few (Use discretion if necessary). I uninstalled iCUE (Might me ROG Armory for others, any LED or motherboard control devices. I uninstalled my microphone (R0DE Podcast, it has an output speaker as well). 

I tried DCH drivers reinstalling my Nvidia drivers at first, this test was good. I redid everything, then installed the Geforce Experience software and went that route ultimately. 

HPET is disabled under "System Devices".

Thank you, Microsoft Teams Team, for allowing this thread and posts to continue, as I was having issues with Microsoft Teams and my solution above corrected the issue. As soon as a meeting would start under a Citrix environment with Vt-D and standard Virtualization enabled in BIOS, my computer would hard crash. I was unable to get my receiver to recognize Dolby Atmos, or even an HDMI signal at all, ARC enabled/disabled, Pass-through on/off, ECO on/off, handshake failures, cable swaps did not work, testing on a work laptop proved instant results, which added frustration to a clean install of Windows 10 22H2 which is a combination of work and play. 

TL;DR: Safe Mode, DDU v18.0.6.9, Do Not Restart, Remove all chipset specific drivers and uninstall the drivers associated with them, restart in safe mode, check to make sure most/all chipset specific drivers associated with your chipset are removed, remove all cached window and graphics settings in your registry via regedit (Mine are located here Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers) and I individually deleted each key in the folders: Configuration, Connectivity, ScaleFactors, MonitorDataStore, AdditionalModeLists. Restart computer, reinstall your manufacturer chipset drivers from your motherboard support website, restart, install any optional updates Windows 10 wants to install (I do a restore point before doing this step in case something goes south and I can revert back), restart, install Geforce Experience drivers (Studio or Game Ready did not seem to make any difference whatsoever), restart. On the hardware side, it is advised not to hot plug HDMI cords while appliances are running due to a low DC voltage, do what you want in this regard, I tried 149 different combinations of on/off, sleep, hibernate, shut down, on both the receiver and the PC, it all pointed to a software configuration issue. Download sound keeper, rename SoundKeeper.exe to All.exe, run, sound mixer, mute or put volume at 0, enable your Atmos or 7.1 or whatever in sound settings, enable or disable your other devices as needed; a lot of websites will say to prune your audio devices and show hidden or disabled, those are low level duh moment type fixes, where others may need more in-depth cleaning and analysis of the issue. All my monitors have their inf's installed and are enabled and hanging out. Make sure your MSI/MSI-X settings are on for positive IRQ numbered devices using MSI_util_v3.exe. 

Good luck, all! May this help one individual out there three years from now. 

Very Respectfully,

Tristan