5.1 Audio I/O for Windows 10?

Hello, all!

Looking for a bit of hardware purchasing advice.

We've recently upgraded our main grading / delivery machine from a MacPro 5,1 to a Puget Systems Resolve station running Windows 10. We've been monitoring our audio as 5.1 for several months now using a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 on the MacPro, but we've run into a bit of snag using that on the Windows machine. The Focusrite only shows up as a Stereo device when attempting to configure our speakers in the "Video and Audio I/O" settings panel (picture below):

ppa_focusrite_201905_01 (3).png (50.49 KiB) Viewed 1931 times

After calling Focusrite and verifying that I am able to get 5.1 playback out of Adobe Premiere by changing my audio in Premiere from MME to ASIO, I called Blackmagic to see if Resolve supports ASIO drivers as well. DaVinci Resolve, as of v15, does not support ASIO drivers, per the BMD tech I spoke with. I'm of course able to setup multiple-mono and interleaved 5.1 timelines and output with discrete mono channels or interleaved 5.1 as I normally would, and can monitor that audio as a Stereo output, but I'm not able to monitor my 5.1 timelines or renders properly.

Which leads me to my question: What audio interfaces are you Windows 10 users running to successfully monitor 5.1 audio?

The way I see it, I have a few options to get this done:

- Find another rack-mountable interface that works with Resolve on Windows 10 properly (non-ASIO).
- Get a receiver that can output to at least 6 XLR/TRS lines, going in via optical cable from the motherboard.
- Same as directly above, only going in via HDMI from my Decklink.

All of my relevant machine specs are listed below. Thanks for your input all, hope this proves to be helpful for other people confused about this until Resolve supports ASIO (hopefully very soon)!

SPECS:
Windows 10 Pro
Gigabyte x299 Designare
i9 7920X
x2 RTX 2080
Decklink 4K Extreme 12g
64GB RAM
Focusrite Scarlett 18i20

RME is always a good suggestion.

It is odd that Resolve on Windows doesn't support ASIO. But then the fault could also lie with Focusrite and other companies that don't supply proper WASAPI drivers...

Hi Ryan,

It is possible to use the 18i20 interface if you have the Scarlett MixControl version 1.9b10.exe. It's a beta driver and looks like it has been removed from beta.focusrite.com.

Also, I tried the new driver and it looks like they removed multi channel support for WDM / WASAPI drivers. The new driver locks out the configure button.

Don't forget under properties / Advance to set default format to 24 bit, 48khz.

Win10 settings:

Win10SurrSettings.png (62.67 KiB) Viewed 1832 times

What should be available in Resolve:

ResolveSettings.png (94.65 KiB) Viewed 1832 times

I have the same problem with the Focusrite Clarett+Pre model in my Davinci Resolve Color Suit. I have another suit with Baselight and I set up the same interface just using the inputs and outputs in analog mode. I use a SDi de-ebeder audio and works good, I wonder if I need to do the same in this Windows Davinci station.



I use Apantac DA-SDI-DE SDI Audio De-Embedder, connect a SDI output signal for my monitor, and make a DB-25 cable routing to each analog input to the interface. Just using the interface as a mixer.

I second Isaac’s suggestion of using a de-embedder. But that depends how you want to control the volume. We use an SPL surround sound volume controller. That can be expensive.

A consumer audio receiver that supports HDMI multi channel PCM audio is simple to configure and use. Just make sure it supports the HDMI signal you will send.