S/PDIF audio disabled in Vista? | The Coffeehouse

Frank Hileman
VG.net

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=7675

Is it true that Vista disables S/PDIF audio outputs? This seems like it would make it a useless OS for musicians and audio professionals.

Thanks!

Stebet
Buuuurrrritoooo!

Once again that FUD of an "analysis" comes biting people in the bums.

No, Vista does NOT disable any outputs unless the content specifically asks for it (if i recall correctly), and as far as i know no content that does that has been released.

Maybe we can get Larry Osterman or some other audio guru to clarify things up a bit?

dahat

@ home my speakers are plugged into my Vista desktop only through S/PDIF and for the most part the only problems I have (only from time to time) are driver related. GD nVidia.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

Sven has also problems with S/PDIF. We have a few threads (here and in Techoff) about it... The problem seems to be a combination of the new audio stack + the way how legacy applications try to access S/PDIF. The old Windows (before Vista) did that in another way then Vista does and that's why you get the problems.

andokai

If you get proper drivers then S/PDIF appears as an output device which you can set to default and unlike XP before it you can control the volume output to it.

With the default drivers S/PDIF is disabled by default but can be enabled by checking a box. Take that evil music industry. Your plans have been thwarted by my ability to check a box.

Frank Hileman
VG.net

Here's the original doc that caused a fuss:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

According to that doc, S/PDIF is disabled if the stream is considered content protected...

"Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in. Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content [Note E]. In other words if you've sunk a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be able to use it with protected content.

Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd."

So, maybe you would not notice a problem until a particular audio stream comes through. I understand the reasoning, but audio people often just need to monitor an arbitrary mix of audio streams.

I just checked and my audio card does not have any special vista drivers...

Frank Hileman
VG.net

Well I looked around and supposedly that protected content disabling is not supposed to happen for audio, only video, can anyone confirm?

Interesting thing is, companies producing professional audio cards for musicians don't seem to have Vista drivers. So I guess the driver change was massive, or it is not considered a good platform for that task. I would like to know the reason.

Stebet
Buuuurrrritoooo!

Frank Hileman wrote:
Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd."

The thing is that this example of his is also utterly wrong on many levels.

Larry Osterman wrote:
Since Sony won't license a SACD drive in a form factor that can be installed in a PC, I suspect that Peter's entire argument is a straw-man. You can't play back SACD's on Vista because you can't play back SACD's on ANY PC form factor device.

Even if a SACD drive was released for PC form factors, there's no guarantee that even if it is physically protected and encrypted (much like DVD's) that it'd be DRM'ed in a way to qualify as "premium" content. I guess that would all depend on the software player implementation.

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

Frank Hileman wrote:
Well I looked around and supposedly that protected content disabling is not supposed to happen for audio, only video, can anyone confirm?

No, protected audio content is definitely protected. You can't play DRM-protected content over S/PDIF* because that would give you a zero-degradation copy that you can do whatever you like with; you can play it over HDMI because the HDMI spec addresses DRM protection.** You can also play it over any analog output you like.**

* You can play any non-DRM-protected content over SPDIF, of course; this includes DVDs.

** ... so long as all the drivers that touch the audio are correctly DRM-signed.
All the audio drivers that come with Vista are DRM-signed; all the audio drivers that come with a system that has a Vista logo are DRM-signed; all the audio drivers that come with a device that has a Vista logo are DRM-signed; all the audio drivers that are distributed through Windows Update are DRM-signed. (If any of these are not DRM-signed, that's a bug, and one with an easy fix... release another update, correctly signed this time.)

Frank Hileman wrote:

Interesting thing is, companies producing professional audio cards for musicians don't seem to have Vista drivers. So I guess the driver change was massive, or it is not considered a good platform for that task. I would like to know the reason.

That's interesting. Can you give specifics? Perhaps the XP driver "just works", or perhaps the Microsoft UAA class drivers serve their needs?

LarryOsterman

Matthew van Eerde wrote:

Frank Hileman wrote: Well I looked around and supposedly that protected content disabling is not supposed to happen for audio, only video, can anyone confirm?

No, protected audio content is definitely protected. You can't play DRM-protected content over S/PDIF* because that would give you a zero-degradation copy that you can do whatever you like with; you can play it over HDMI because the HDMI spec addresses DRM protection.** You can also play it over any analog output you like.**

* You can play any non-DRM-protected content over SPDIF, of course; this includes DVDs.

** ... so long as all the drivers that touch the audio are correctly DRM-signed.
All the audio drivers that come with Vista are DRM-signed; all the audio drivers that come with a system that has a Vista logo are DRM-signed; all the audio drivers that come with a device that has a Vista logo are DRM-signed; all the audio drivers that are distributed through Windows Update are DRM-signed. (If any of these are not DRM-signed, that's a bug, and one with an easy fix... release another update, correctly signed this time.)

Frank Hileman wrote:
Interesting thing is, companies producing professional audio cards for musicians don't seem to have Vista drivers. So I guess the driver change was massive, or it is not considered a good platform for that task. I would like to know the reason.

That's interesting. Can you give specifics? Perhaps the XP driver "just works", or perhaps the Microsoft UAA class drivers serve their needs?

Btw, from what I understand this (disabling S/PDIF on protected content) is not Vista specific - XP did the same thing when rendering protected content.

macromice

Vista does indeed prevent Protected or "Premium" Content (mp3, wma, etc) from being channeled in any manner which would allow the user to create an "un-protected" copy. That is the purpose of the new O/S, to protect DRM at any cost...including customer utility. S/PDIF is considered "unsafe" and is therefore crippled to a great extent in Vista. Additionally, all hardware manufacturers are required to provide ONLY drivers that will inhibit functions such as S/PDIF in the Vista environment. Should Vista find an "unsafe" driver during the mandatory "update" process, the machine will call home and the driver will be disabled.

Likewise, Video considered "Premium" Content will be prevented from routing through devices that Vista does not consider "safe". All new video drivers to support "Vista Ready" cards will have much of their previous functions crippled from the outset or later on via the update process....and if you CHANGE it somehow, again, the machine will call home and simply disable it again. Microsoft is presently tracking ALL customer attempts to "cancel" or otherwise prevent updates (such as the Genuine Advantage Program) from taking place and further actions could be taken later down the road (e.g. criminal investigation).

Be clear on this one point - Microsoft's intent with Vista is to secure Digital Rights Management AT ALL COSTS. Don't like it? Go back to XP where everything still works and stay there as long as possible or switch to Linux. I’m in the process of installing ubuntu even as we speak. I read 1984, I graduated in 1984, and I’m all too familiar with the slippery slope of big corporate/government control over the private lives of citizens…and Vista IS 1984…art brought to life. Big Brother will now tell you what you can and can’t do in the privacy of your own home….even if it’s completely legal music or video creation/modification by a budding Sound Recording or Film major. No wonder the retail sales price of Vista has already fallen by 30% since January.

LarryOsterman

macromice wrote:
Vista does indeed prevent Protected or "Premium" Content (mp3, wma, etc) from being channeled in any manner which would allow the user to create an "un-protected" copy. That is the purpose of the new O/S, to protect DRM at any cost...including customer utility. S/PDIF is considered "unsafe" and is therefore crippled to a great extent in Vista. Additionally, all hardware manufacturers are required to provide ONLY drivers that will inhibit functions such as S/PDIF in the Vista environment. Should Vista find an "unsafe" driver during the mandatory "update" process, the machine will call home and the driver will be disabled.

Likewise, Video considered "Premium" Content will be prevented from routing through devices that Vista does not consider "safe". All new video drivers to support "Vista Ready" cards will have much of their previous functions crippled from the outset or later on via the update process....and if you CHANGE it somehow, again, the machine will call home and simply disable it again. Microsoft is presently tracking ALL customer attempts to "cancel" or otherwise prevent updates (such as the Genuine Advantage Program) from taking place and further actions could be taken later down the road (e.g. criminal investigation).

Be clear on this one point - Microsoft's intent with Vista is to secure Digital Rights Management AT ALL COSTS. Don't like it? Go back to XP where everything still works and stay there as long as possible or switch to Linux. I’m in the process of installing ubuntu even as we speak. I read 1984, I graduated in 1984, and I’m all too familiar with the slippery slope of big corporate/government control over the private lives of citizens…and Vista IS 1984…art brought to life. Big Brother will now tell you what you can and can’t do in the privacy of your own home….even if it’s completely legal music or video creation/modification by a budding Sound Recording or Film major. No wonder the retail sales price of Vista has already fallen by 30% since January.

Ummm.. I've said this before, I'll say it again. Inside the OS, Vista does NOTHING w.r.t. DRM'ed content. It's a platform, and it provides mechanisms for applications to make policy decisions based on the state of the operating system. The Vista media player has support for playback of DRM'ed content, but that's an application running on top of Vista. Now the audio rendering engine normally runs in a protected environment that is used by DRM, but it runs just fine outside the environment (and if you REALLY want to, there's a registry key you can set to disable the protected environment).

The "disable S/PDIF" behavior is UNCHANGED from Windows XP. Nobody seemed to care about this back in XP, but all of a sudden it's a huge conspiracy. I just don't get it.

If you don't like DRM, don't use it. There's nobody forcing you to run it. I have NO DRM'ed content in my house (except for my DVDs, since the number of commercial DVDs without DRM is somewhere around 0).

I don't particularly like DRM, but I totally recognize and support the rights of content owners to add DRM to their content.

anand.t

macromice wrote:

Be clear on this one point - Microsoft's intent with Vista is to secure Digital Rights Management AT ALL COSTS. Don't like it? Go back to XP where everything still works and stay there as long as possible or switch to Linux. I’m in the process of installing ubuntu even as we speak. I read 1984, I graduated in 1984, and I’m all too familiar with the slippery slope of big corporate/government control over the private lives of citizens…and Vista IS 1984…art brought to life. Big Brother will now tell you what you can and can’t do in the privacy of your own home….even if it’s completely legal music or video creation/modification by a budding Sound Recording or Film major. No wonder the retail sales price of Vista has already fallen by 30% since January.

Let us be clear with one thing 99% of people who use computers dont know what is DRM and care less. If you are going to tell me that Vista price has fallen just because of this you should be in neverland which is far far away in no man's world.

Unless you are geeky geeky who knows how to write OS and manage you own kernel and software packages OSS cant do much. You are still going to be dictated by someone on what you can do and what you cant do in OS. You will always remain in 1984.

And yes I dont have any problems with MSFT doing a genuine check. They spent billions developing something and they just want to make sure that we use legal goodies.

You have registered only today and posted only this. It is really sad that guys like you register for the sole reason of spreading FUD. As already some microsoftie has replied to your false accusations, I shall not go further. I hope that you can set up a blog and spread such rumors

If you dont like MSFT products you dont have to use it. That does not mean that you should be standing on a rock and shouting at others who use it. We do know how useless microsoft can be (win ME) Tongue Out and how great they can be (C#) and we are very well aware of other choices including ubuntu. The very fact that we are registered in a tech forum shows that we are also geeks Cool .

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop
Seven of Niner! Resistance is Futile!

macromice wrote:
I’m in the process of installing ubuntu even as we speak. I read 1984, I graduated in 1984, and I’m all too familiar with the slippery slope of big corporate/government control over the private lives of citizens…and Vista IS 1984…art brought to life.