How can I get Audio out of BOTH HDMI & Optical?

Guys,

I had recently built a "Sandy Bridge" platform based HTPC which is currently running MediaPortal as it's GUI. The motherboard I'm using is the Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 along with the Intel i5-2500K CPU.

The motherboard has both the HDMI port and an Optical Output (TOSLink) port. I have a cable running from the Optical out to my Receiver, and the HDMI cable runs directly to my TV.

The audio on the HDMI uses the Intel Driver and the audio in the Optical uses the RealteK driver.

Right now the way things are, I'm only getting audio out of either HDMI or Optical. In the Control Panel, under Hardware & Sounds, I can click on Sounds and select one of these two as the "Default Audio Device" ...

Intel Display Audio
Realtek High Definition (Optical)

Whichever one I choose is the one where sounds are outputted from.

How can I get sound out of both though? Can I only get sound out of one of the ports at a time? Is it not possible to get audio out of both??

There are 2 reasons ...

One is, we have blu-ray movies as well as recorded shows on the HTPC. When we're watching the movies (usually MKV's), we like to use the receiver for the audio to get full surround sound effect. When we're watching recorded TV shows however, we'd rather not use the receiver & instead just use the TV for the stereo audio.

Another reason, I just bought a new Yamaha RX-A2000 receiver. It has an Optical Output to which I'm going to hook up my Sony Surround Sound wireless headphones. The receiver does not convert audio it's receiving from the HDMI into the Optical Out port ... you have to have audio coming out from the device via Optical out in order to pass it on to the headphones. This is a very general practice ... if you head over to the Receiver forum, you'll find tons doing this. A general example would be XBOX 360 or Blu-ray player. You have to hook up both HDMI & Optical from the XBOX 360 into the receiver in order to get audio from both the receiver & the optical out (And into your headphones if you want it that way).

It works fine with devices like Blu-ray players & XBOX 360 and even Cable boxes which have both HDMI out & Optical out ... they are all simultaneously giving audio via HDMI & Optical ... and receiver is outputting audio to both HDMI connection & the optical out ... However ... I need the same to happen through my HTPC and it's not doing it.

BTW, I'm not sure what receiver you have but I've talked to several Yamaha RX-Ax000 owners who have audio in from both HDMI & Optical and they don't complain of skipping audio.

I think you're right; and JRiver won't be able to help me out as I use MediaPortal as my GUI.


Which splitter are you talking about? Because let's say I were to define the HDMI output as my default output in Windows - and let's say I used a Splitter ... no splitter is able to take audio from HDMI and pass it through to an Optical output. Unless you know something that I don't!

Would someone care to elaborate what everyone seems to know but I don't -- Might help me out!!

Who has used one of these in my given situation?

This is not from me - because I've never used one of these myself - but I was told by someone right here in this forum that none of these splitters can actually pass surround audio that it "recieves" via HDMI and "output" it via Optical. That audio has to be recieved via Optical to output to Optical.

That was my reasoning for not considering this as a solution. I can easily pick up one of these fairly cheap at monoprice.

Can someone confirm?