Notebooks & Netbooks

[Kaibah]

Hi,

I don't know why this keeps happening, but I'll be playing a game like Warframe on this laptop (Acer Aspire V3-771G) and even though Dolby Home Theatre is turned on, doing certain things (like entering a different menu) will just turn Dolby off for NO reason. If I Alt+Tab out of the game, I can even see it has become disabled in the system tray. Turning it back on will make Dolby's enhancements return, but it will still turn itself off if I enter the same menus or do other things in the game. Why?

Can someone please help?

[kevo]

I'm having the same problem and it's rather annoying.

For me Dolby Home Theater only turns itself off when I'm connecting to a multiplayer server in any game (I've played Team Fortress 2, Battlefield BC2, BF3, Dota 2 and Street Fighter 4). As long as I'm not playing online, the program doesn't disable the audio enhancements.

I don't know why this keeps happening, it seems like a bug with the program itself. The only information I found on the internet were other people having the same problem, but I haven't found a solution, yet.

If Dolby won't fix it, is there any way to bind turning Dolby Home Theater back on to a key? I would be fine with having to press a single key when connecting to a game server, but having to minimize the game I'm playing and rightclicking the Dolby icon every 30 minutes or so is really, really annoying.

I'm using an Acer V3 with Windows 8.

[dairix1]

Same problems here! While I was playing Planetside 2 it was, more or less, with no problems - DHT only turned off at entering into the game and loading to training map, but the problem showed when I started to play Warframe, that's just very.... very annoying - I need to use ''Windows'' button or ALT+TAB every 20mins or less.

Some online game does not have that problem - like Vindictus or Path of Exile, and I did not had the problem with other applications.

P.s I brought this topic up, because, as I see - the problem is NOT solved!

[kevo]

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dairix1 wrote:

Some online game does not have that problem - like Vindictus or Path of Exile, and I did not had the problem with other applications.

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same here, a selected few games seem to not cause the issue. rayman legends can connect to the ubisoft servers without turning dolby home theater off, neither do applications like steam or web browsers cause any trouble. but the majority of the online games i play do and it's really annoying.

if i could just bind a key to toggle dolby home theater on and off, it wouldn't be that bad, but having to alt+tab every time i switch to another server is really inconvenient.

i have contacted the dolby support team shortly after my last reply to this thread. while they were friendly and quick to respond, i doubt that it did any good. they couldn't offer a solution for this problem and just asked for all the information i could provide. they told me they would inform acer about the issue, but this was over 2 months ago and nothing has happened so far.

updating the realtek drivers and reinstalling dolby home theater did not fix the problem and neither did playing around with the driver settings. if you knew what you were looking for, you could probably avoid the off switch by changing some registry values, it seems like such a small problem.

at this point i doubt that this will ever be fixed, the problem exists since the release of windows 8 or maybe even longer. i am almost considering replacing dolby home theater with the srs audio essentials or the dfx audio enhancer, but then again, i don't want to spend another 30 bucks when i can just alt+tab and make a few clicks every now and then.

in case this doesn't get fixed eventually, i'll avoid buying products that use dolby software in the future.

[rigilkent]

my Dolby home theater keeps on turning off everytime I play music and video or even games. I'm a lil' bit piss off with this problem and it's really annoying. HELP ME PLEASE. Thanks.

[kevo]

i think i've finally found a solution for this issue. it seems like the problem was caused by an outdated lan driver. after downloading and installing the updated atheros lan driver (Lan_Atheros_2.1.0.4_W8x64_A.zip), the issue does no longer occure. i can join servers just fine and dolby home theatre v4 does not turn itself off anymore. i have tried it with the games team fortress 2, dota and natural selection 2, as well as virtualbox (which used to to off the dolby sound enhancements when starting a virtual machine). i should mention that i've installed the latest nvidia beta drivers (v331.93), which install an updated version of nvidia hd audio, at the same time as the atheros lan drivers, so i can't be entirely sure which driver update actually fixed the problem, but as the issue occured pretty much only when connecting to a server, i'm positive that the lan driver caused the problem. if you are still having this issue, could you try downloading and installing the lan drivers mentioned above and confirm if it's working for you or not? even if you're using wi-fi, i think this could still possibly fix the problem.

[Lordgeorge16]

Has anyone else confirmed that Kevo's solution works with an Aspire V3-551G running Windows 8?  I'm getting really sick and tired of having to alt+tab in and out of Left 4 Dead 2 just to keep Dolby on whenever I load a new map.  I don't even know where to find Atheros drivers, because Qualcomm seems to have nothing on their site about it, and Acer only provides the "Lan_Atheros_2.0.12.13_W7x86W7x64_A" driver, which doesn't solve the problem.

EDIT: Hold up, made a mistake.  I forgot to choose the proper OS when searching for drivers.  Just grabbed 2.1.0.6 and I'm about to install and restart.  I'll edit again with results shortly.

EDIT 2: No, I'm afraid this didn't correct the problem.  It still shuts off whenever I connect to a server on a multiplayer game.  Dolby can certainly expect that I won't be using their audio software in the future for gaming unless they find a way to fix this issue.

[dairix1]

I don't know what I did (auto updates maybe?), but the problem was gone around that time when kevo wrote in this topic!

[Lordgeorge16]

I recently discovered a slightly hacky, albeit very useful solution to this problem for people who are still having it.  I've noticed that if you're in a voice chat on Skype or Steam, Dolby will shut off when you first join the call, but if you stay in the call and turn it back on, the program will remain active even if you join a multiplayer game.  It doesn't matter whether or not there are other people in the group chat with you, but as long as you're in that voice chat in the background, Dolby will stay on no matter what server you connect to. 

[clockwork]

this works! if anyone downloads teamspeak they can easily game while using their dolby sound editor as long as they are running teamspeak it will stay on