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987 Comments

  1. Kevin07 Jul 2015 @ 01:22

    just updated to XonarSwitch 0.9.607 and want to point out that if you are using the virtual 7.1 speaker shifter it will shift all the speakers to the very center of the spectrum. I am running a 5.1 setup and everything was playing out of the center speaker even when i tested all the others. Don't know what would happen if you are running 2.1 (I would assume you hear alomst nothing) but if you use this setting just click reset and all will go back to normal.

    Glad my dolby pro-logic settings are saving now though. great work Giulio!

    Reply

    • Giulio07 Jul 2015 @ 11:24

      I'm not sure I understand what you are reporting about the VSS speakers being at the center of the spectrum. Do you refer to something that is visible in the VSS graph, or that manifests itself just on the sound side? Have you tried using the default preset and then setting your speaker position again?

      Reply

      • Kevin09 Jul 2015 @ 06:33

        after updating all the speakers were literally on top of the the users head on the VSS picture causing all sound to only play out of my center speaker. Obviously I re-adjusted to fix things but I was just trying to point out that updating it did that to me for some reason.

        Reply

        • Giulio09 Jul 2015 @ 10:15

          It's clear now, thanks.

          What you reported happens when a profile that had the Virtual Speaker Shifter layout set to "Don't change" is applied without being previously being opened in the profile editor. My bad for not pointing that out in the release notes. I've updated them now.

          That is due to the different way the latest revision handles the "Don't change" VSS layout option compared to previous revisions.

          Whoever has profiles with the VSS layout set to "Don't change" is advised to open each of those profiles once in the profile editor. Saving the profile isn't required, the mere act of opening it fixes the issue.

          After such a problematic profile has been applied and the VSS speakers are collapsed at the sound field center, re-applying the profile that caused the problem won't solve it even if in the meanwhile it was fixed by opening it in the profile editor, since at that point the "Don't change" option will work as intended and leave things the way they are. In that case, one needs to apply a profile with a VSS layout other than "Don't Change" or update the speakers position in the real time window, either by dragging each individual speaker or using one of the presets.

          Reply

  2. SnK07 Jul 2015 @ 02:22

    Something is wrong with headphone sound balance.

    Reply

    • Giulio07 Jul 2015 @ 11:21

      I believe the occasional volume imbalance (in spite of Windows' balance control being centered) is a driver bug. I've experienced it both before and after developing and using XonarSwitch. Sometimes a reboot fixes it, sometimes I have to uninstall and reinstall the drivers.

      Reply

      • SnK10 Jul 2015 @ 19:18

        All right, It's happened just one time.

        Reply

      • Interceptor30 Jul 2015 @ 23:15

        is bug with louder right channel at windows 10 already fixed?

        Reply

        • Giulio31 Jul 2015 @ 11:53

          This isn't a XonarSwitch-specific bug as far as I know. To post about the UniXonar drivers, please head to http://maxedtech.com/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/

          Reply

          • Interceptor06 Aug 2015 @ 20:37

            never had this at win7, after last update for xonarswitch, this bug just occur.
            u guys 100% sure it not caused by xonar switch as well? only happen when i change from 4 speakers to headphone or hp to 4speakers (have headphones and monitor speakers connected)

            Reply

            • Giulio07 Aug 2015 @ 11:41

              Bugs can never be ruled out when software is involved. Since they are clearly unintentional, they can be everywhere,

              However, in this specific case, it appears highly unlikely it's a XonarSwitch bug. While for a lot of features XonarSwitch interfaces directly with the card driver, for volume specifically it uses the Windows programming interface.

              XonarSwitch changes the system volume, and the system audio layer issues the proper driver commands to propagate the volume change to the hardware. If there was a XonarSwitch bug involved you should see the imbalance in the system properties (sound control panel -> playback tab -> double click on Xonar speakers -> levels tab -> click on balance). If the left and right sliders there are on the same position while the xonarswitch balance slider is centered, and you still have unbalanced sound, XonarSwitch did its part right and the problem lies elsewhere.

              Reply

            • Roman07 Aug 2015 @ 18:00

              Have the same problem. This bug appears randomly after switching 5.1 -> 2.1 or vice versa (5.1 / 7.1).

              Sound Card Model : Xonar D1
              Xonar Driver Version : 8.1.8.1822
              Xonar Driver Registry Key : SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}003
              Xonar Card Instance ID : PCI\VEN_13F6&DEV_8788&SUBSYS_834F1043&REV_00\5&39F964C9&0&0800E5
              Operating System Version : Microsoft Windows 8.1 Enterprise N x64
              Operating System Locale ID : 1033

              Reply

              • Giulio07 Aug 2015 @ 18:11

                When the bug appears, have you tried checking the system balance as I wrote above in my reply to Interceptor?

                If you see different channel levels there, but you haven't touched XonarSwitch's balance slider, it could be a bug in XonarSwitch, otherwise it's unlikely. An application can't do much more than setting the each channel's volume right.

                If the physical volume level doesn't reflect the software volume level, something either went wrong in the communication between the operating system and the driver, in the driver, or in the card's hardware.

                Reply

  3. Bob07 Jul 2015 @ 19:22

    Xonarswitch doesn't show up when extracting with Rar or something requiring cpu like rebuilding files from IDM but windows volume always works.

    Reply

    • Giulio07 Jul 2015 @ 21:55

      You are not the first person to report sluggishness when there is disk activity going on, so I'm pretty sure there is some bottleneck to address.

      Unfortunately so far I've failed to reproduce the same behavior on my machine.

      When you say XonarSwitch doesn't open, what specific window are you referring to? Profiles or real time settings? If it's the latter, do you have the same behavior both double clicking on the tray icon and using the menu to open it?

      Reply

  4. Rod08 Jul 2015 @ 02:33

    I see a lot of bug reports. That's cool too, but just wanted to post to say thanks. I think may not do that as often. But it's well deserved. Coming from the official drivers this interface is a savior. Grazie!

    Reply

  5. Guido09 Jul 2015 @ 16:44

    Hello Guilio, thanks for this amazing and incredibly useful program. 🙂 I have a question and two suggestions:

    Question: "Playback Parameters" - I don't fully understand the point of the equal sign button. Can you explain when or why I should set different sample rates for System and Card and when I should use the equal sign button?

    Suggestion 1: I use three profiles for headphones (2.0, virtual 5.1 and virtual 7.1) and one profile for speakers. I configured the profiles to set the volume level when switching. But, when I change the volume in Windows, the check mark on the selected profile (right clicking on tray icon) will be gone. This might be understandable, because 'naturally' the profile will only be valid on the default set volume level but the problem is that I won't be able to identify the current selected profile (which sucks if I want to know if I'm using the 5.1 or 7.1 for example). Would it be possible to add another indicator or simply remove the requirement for the correct volume level?

    Suggestion 2: If it's not already possible, could you add a setting to only change the volume level if switching from a different output device?

    Thank you!

    W7x64/Xonar Essence ST/GigaWorks T20

    Reply

    • Giulio09 Jul 2015 @ 17:05

      The purpose of the equal sign button is simply of convenience. It's there just to provide an easy way of keeping the card internal sample rate and the system mixer sample rate aligned so that the audio stream coming from the system mixer isn't resampled by the driver.

      Suggestion #1 is interesting. I could add a setting in the profile window to allow the user to decide on a profile-by-profile basis whether XonarSwitch should use volume to determine if the current profile is still valid.
      Suggestion #2 should already be possible if I understand correctly what you mean. If you select "Use last" in your profiles, XonarSwitch will restore the last volume used for the same output combination. That means that if you switch from a profile using 2.0 rear speakers to another one using 2.0 rear speakers the volume won't change, but if you switch to a profile using front headphones, the volume will be restored to the last one used for front headphones.

      Reply

      • Guido09 Jul 2015 @ 17:24

        Hello Giulio, regarding my second suggestion: This actually might be a non-issue nobody else cares about because it's easy enough to change the volume level after switching, but still. What I meant was that I still want to set a volume level by default, but it should only change if I used a different device before.
        Example (all profiles have 'Set volume to X' enabled:
        Speakers Headphones 2.0/5.1/7.1 = set volume level to X
        Headphones 2.0/5.1/7.1 Headphones 2.0/5.1/7.1 = don't change volume level
        The reason why I still want to use a default volume is for example that some movies are very quiet on speakers, so I might switch to headphones but forget to turn down the speaker volume again. So when I'm launching Windows the next time, the startup sound or foobar etc. will blow the speakers out 😉
        I hope you could understand what I meant. My English usually sucks but I tried.
        It's alright if you don't really give a crap about this, it's probably not very important heh.
        Cheers

        Reply

        • Guido09 Jul 2015 @ 17:28

          Oops, there should be some angle brackets between speaker and headphones, but you probably know what I meant.

          Reply

      • Chris Leipold12 Jul 2015 @ 17:39

        Hi guys for suggestion #1 a +1 from me.

        Reply

  6. Kamil09 Jul 2015 @ 17:51

    I have question, maybe its noob question but I have to ask:-) when I play on headphones what should I set to have 5.1 sound i game? Because now I set 5.1 sound in game and in xonar panel i use sound 5.1 and front panel headphones. How to set this in xonar switch? Thanks in advance

    Reply

    • Giulio10 Jul 2015 @ 11:47

      When you play games, set the combo box called "OS Speakers layout / Source channels" to 8 channels. That way, Windows will tell your games that you have a 7.1 surround system available, even though physically you just have a 2 channel system (headphones). That will trick your game into generating a 8 channels audio stream, with sound effects in the appropriate channels.

      At that point the sound virtualization engine of your sound card will use the 8 channels audio it receives from the game to emulate a 7.1 surround system via your headphones.

      To that end, activate Dolby Headphones (I set the virtual hall size to DH-2 Cinema, but you can choose different settings based on your preference) and Virtual Speaker Shifter. In Virtual Speaker Shifter, Luis U's preset is recommended to achieve optimal virtual sound position recognition, especially for those games like FPSs where accurate positional information can effectively improve your gameplay.

      Reply

  7. mzso02 Aug 2015 @ 10:22

    Hello!
    It's claimed on the uni-xonar page that support was added for the 1.75b driver, but it doesn't work for me.
    Most sections are greyed in the Xonar Swtich context menu. No Real Time Settings or Profiles, master volume unknown.
    I have a Xonar D1 BTW.

    Reply

    • Giulio03 Aug 2015 @ 19:07

      Can you please post the diagnostic info you find in the about window?

      I've tried installing the 1.75b driver and it works correctly on my system. I have a DX, which is almost identical to your D1, besides the PCI-E interface and bridge chip.

      Reply

      • mzso03 Aug 2015 @ 23:45

        I was in error. It looks like it needed a restart to work. Or I don't know what was the problem. It worked after.

        Reply

  8. Dieter02 Aug 2015 @ 22:59

    Hi Guys.

    I am using Xonar Switch with my Xonar DGX and i have several profiles. After the Update to Windows 10 i deinstall Xonar Switch and Uni Xonar Drivers because videos in youtube run with sound crackles. Before that i did a backup in xonar switch.

    Afer reinstall driver and Xonar switch, i click on restore, choose the XonarSwitch Settings.xbf file and the following window appears:

    "This doesn't appear to be a valid XonarSwitch backup file. Restore operation aborted."

    What can i do? My settings and profiles were very specific...:(

    Reply

    • Giulio03 Aug 2015 @ 14:33

      Most likely this is caused by a lack of encoding declaration in the XonarSwitch XML backup file, which I solved internally and will be in the next revision. But even the fix won't make old backups work: a manual intervention, detailed below, is required.

      The reason this problem only occurs occasionally is that it's usually triggered by a local character like "ö" in one of the profile names, which is something that tends to affect northern European users the most.

      To solve it please open the backup file with a plain text editor like notepad.

      If the first line looks like this (I've omitted the smaller and greater signs since they were filtered by the site messaging system):
      ?xml version="1.0"?

      please change it so that it becomes like this:
      ?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?

      please make sure you don't change anything else in the file.

      Save and retry restoring the file. It should now work.

      Reply

      • Dieter03 Aug 2015 @ 18:48

        Big thanks! That solves the problem!

        One of the profile name was "mehr Höhen", it means "more Treble" in german 🙂

        Reply

    • mzso03 Aug 2015 @ 23:49

      Was your crackling problem fixed? I couldn't solve my crackling problem after upgrading to 10.

      Reply

      • Dieter04 Aug 2015 @ 00:00

        No, i don't have this crackling sound with Win8.1, only with Win10. But i have noticed that my onboard realtek soundcard do the same!. When i start Video (or soundstream via soundcload or something else) with Chrome, Opera or Vivaldi, and then i start a program like Jdownloader or Steam, the sound cracks during loading. It concerns html5 videos AND flash as well. Microsofts Edge don't have this issue.

        And it doesn't matter what sample rate i use (44.1 Khz or above)

        Reply

    • mzso03 Aug 2015 @ 23:51

      BTW what sort of hardware do you have outside the soundcard?

      Reply

  9. mzso04 Aug 2015 @ 13:45

    Something's horribly wrong with 0.9.623. It crashes immediately when I try to open the profiles window. It crashed once when I tried to open the options window. (I'm on windows 10)

    Reply

    • Giulio04 Aug 2015 @ 13:57

      Let's see if someone else reports this kind of problem. The fact you had to restart your PC in order for XonarSwitch to work on Uni Xonar 1.75b was already weird, so it could be something very specific in your case. Also because there are no differences in code when you load the Options window compared to .607, so no reason to crash now and not before.

      What antivirus do you have?

      Reply

      • Feri04 Aug 2015 @ 14:06

        Same problem. Win 10 64bit pro with latest updates and latest unixonar driver. My sound card is xonar ds. It crashes immediately when I try to open the profiles window or real time settings. If helps i installed drivers with low latency settings.

        Reply

        • Giulio04 Aug 2015 @ 14:12

          Same question: do you have Dolby ProLogix IIx active in the profiles (or real time)?

          Reply

        • Feri04 Aug 2015 @ 14:15

          I use avast pro (latest). I turned it off but same problem.

          The log:

          Faulting application name: XonarSwitch.exe, version: 0.9.0.623, time stamp: 0x55bf9532
          Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.10240.16384, time stamp: 0x559f3b2a
          Exception code: 0xc000041d
          Fault offset: 0x000b3e28
          Faulting process id: 0x968
          Faulting application start time: 0x01d0cea6592c250b
          Faulting application path: C:\Users\kasza\Desktop\XonarSwitch.exe
          Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\KERNELBASE.dll
          Report Id: 8514af61-4f5b-47e1-83f0-902612a8d95a
          Faulting package full name:
          Faulting package-relative application ID:

          Reply

      • mzso04 Aug 2015 @ 14:12

        That one was likely after a driver upgrade. This version is just constantly crashing.

        Reply

    • Giulio04 Aug 2015 @ 14:10

      Did you notice if the profiles that crash Xonarswitch have dolby ProLogic IIx active? If you have profiles without it, can you please try and edit them and see if you still have the crash?

      Reply

    • Giulio04 Aug 2015 @ 14:16

      I've disabled the update as a cautionary measure. Can you guys please send me an email (the about window where you can find my address should still be accessible).

      If you can test one thing for me I can probably release a hotfix real quick.

      Reply

  10. SwiftFox05 Aug 2015 @ 19:15

    was just wondering is it possible to create a smart profile that would activate when starting a game? I know this may have been touched on in comments but im in a rush and about to go out. If any1 can shed any light on this or which comment to look at that would be great.

    Reply

  11. APIRIOU05 Aug 2015 @ 21:50

    Thanks for the beautiful 0.9.636 Version on Windows 10. Good job!

    Reply

    • Giulio06 Aug 2015 @ 15:21

      Thank you! It seems not everyone digs the new Win10 look though, which is understandable.

      Reply

  12. mzso06 Aug 2015 @ 00:01

    "Added new tray icons more in line with the new icon style in Windows 10."

    It's also quite fugly. If it were me I whould have added a an outline or shadow to the old icons, to make them readable on both light and dark taskbars.

    Something else:
    What would be nice is if the xonar switch archive included the version number in it's name.

    Reply

    • Chris Leipold06 Aug 2015 @ 04:08

      +1 for version number included in downloaded archive name.

      Reply

    • Giulio06 Aug 2015 @ 15:20

      When using XonarSwitch as a replacement for the system volume icon, I like the look of it to be more integrated with other Win 10 system icons than what the old icons were.

      That said, giving the user choice is never wrong, so I might add an option to opt out of Win10 icons under Win10. I'll see if I can make the old tray icons, especially the headphones one, a bit more visible on darker backgrounds: 16x16 isn't a lot of real estate to play with.

      For the time being, though, you can get the old icons back by running XonarSwitch in Windows 8 compatibility mode.

      Reply

  13. buddybd06 Aug 2015 @ 02:47

    The HP Amp setting does not save if I switch to Speakers then back to HP.

    Other than that, great update.

    Reply

  14. blubiblub06 Aug 2015 @ 21:15

    Hey Giulio,
    I want to build me an audio switch without your tool just with a bat file, can you tell me how to activate the settings when I change them in the registry, do you disable enable the soundcard with devcon or is there a better way? I like your tool but when I play vac or punkbuster protected games I'm a bit scared, so I want to make it more simple.

    thanks
    regards

    Reply

    • Giulio07 Aug 2015 @ 11:57

      I seriously doubt XonarSwitch can be targeted by game protections since basically it sits there doing nothing until you use a keyboard shortcut. Even when automatic process-based switching will be implemented, XonarSwitch will just basically receive notifications from the system that a process has been created, but won't interact with it in any way or form.

      However, if these words didn't reassure you and you still feel a bit paranoid, keep reading.

      XonarSwitch doesn't use the devcon trick. That trick basically forces the Xonar driver to think the system is booting by disabling and re-enabling the sound card and thus reloading the registry-stored settings after changing the ones you want different. The problem with that approach is that the card can't be reset while in use.

      What XonarSwitch does can't be done in a batch file without compiling a command-line program. Fortunately though XonarSwitch can be used as a command line program already.

      You can do this:
      1) Launch XonarSwitch.
      2) Right Click on the tray icon -> Options -> Startup tab -> disable autostart so it doesn't run in background while you are gaming.
      3) Create profiles for the kind of switch you want to do via batch file.
      4) Exit XonarSwitch.
      5) create a batch file for each profile you want to activate. In each batch file write this:
      "C:\Program Files (x86)\XonarSwitch\XonarSwitch.exe" /NoUI /Profile=relevant_profile_name

      With this approach XonarSwitch won't run in background but just start, execute your commands and exit without loading any user interface. It's basically what a compiled ad-hoc command would do but it's already available.
      Of course don't forget to replace the XonarSwitch executable path with your specific one, and relevant_profile_name with the name you attributed to your relevant profile.

      Reply

  15. sucht09 Aug 2015 @ 03:05

    hi
    i don't know if it's my problem or if it's a bug, but i can only select "16-bit Bit-Depth" in the "Asio Control Panel". 🙁
    i thought i try this tool/program together with the latest "UNi-Xonar" drivers(installed with the "Low DPC Latency" option, and your tool/program, wont let me choose 24-bit or 32-bit.
    but when i install the "UNi-Xonar" driver with the "C-Media Panel" option i can choose between 16, 24 and 32-bit Bit-Depth, so where is the error? am i the stupid one or is there really a bug?

    i have the "Asus Xonar Essence STX".

    thank you for your time and your tool/program.

    Reply

    • Giulio09 Aug 2015 @ 14:01

      Try using your ASIO driver with your playback program and then open the panel again from Xonarswitch: you should see the other options. For some reason the ASIO driver populates the other options only when a sound session has been opened.

      Reply

      • sucht11 Aug 2015 @ 23:17

        thank you, i didn't know because i never had that kind of behavior before.

        thank you 😉

        Reply

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