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5.1 sound working excellently on consoles but not on my PC - driving me mad

post #1 of 6
4/25/12 at 3:42am
Thread Starter 
So I need help with fixing a surround sound setup I have. My computer is hooked up through HDMI to my television (SONY KDL-40NX700) which again passes sound through an HDMI ARC connection (or whatever it's called) to a surround sound system (PANASONIC SA-PT90). The problem is, I only get sound through the two front speakers when I play games on my computer, so 5.1 surround isn't functioning for some reason. Do you guys have any idea how to fix this?
  • Surround sound works flawlessly when playing on my consoles, which is setup the exact same way
  • For some reason, I do get sound when doing the speaker set up sound test from withing Windows Media Center, but that's the only place.
  • Tried EDID overriding, which allowed me to configure 5.1 sound but still no sound from rear, center or bass speakers.
  • The HDMI connection on my computer is on a NVIDIA GTX560 Ti

I appreciate all help.
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post #2 of 6
4/25/12 at 5:23am
Make sure the game supports surround sound. You can also try to right click your audio device and hit "configure".
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post #3 of 6
4/25/12 at 6:47am
Which driver are you using?

Also, I occasionally run into this issue - usually after the PC wakes from suspend/sleep. Most of the time windows won't even see an audio device, but once in a while it'll only see it as a stereo device. The only real solution for me is to reboot, but 50% of the time I can get everything back if I 1) switch AVR input _away_ from the PC input, wait several seconds, then switch back, 2) do a rigorous display detection, 3) change the resolution to something else, then back again.

It's a pain in the but - but I haven't done an EDID override yet - I need to read up on how to do that!
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post #4 of 6
4/25/12 at 7:24am
a tv can typically only handle surround sound well if it is dolby digital - as is present with digital tv broadcasts.

computers use raw pcm.

you can buy a sound card with dolby digital live to encode the pcm to dolby digital, typically over an spdif connection.

or you can hook your computer up directly to the receiver, since it likely supports pcm.

your tv only supports 2 channels of pcm it appears.
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post #5 of 6
4/25/12 at 8:25am
Try connecting the HDMI from the pc to the receiver, and then from the receiver to the tv. Your problem may be Windows is seeing it's connected to a tv only, and therefore will only output 2 channel. If it sees it's connected to a receiver it might work.
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post #6 of 6
4/25/12 at 11:55am
Thread Starter 
I'm pretty sure most modern games support 5.1 sound, at least they did back when I had a 5.1 headset (waste of money honestly). I'm pretty sure my games use 5.1 surround sound when I configure my sound output to use 5.1 speakers, judging by the fact that I lose a lot of sound detail due to only the two front speakers working.

I would connect my computer directly into the receiver, but the problem is the receiver is very limited. It supports AUX input (white/red inputs), AV input/output and HDMI ARC which means (I think) that my TV can control it and that my television can output sound to it. Connecting my computer directly to the receiver does nothing. And I'm pretty sure my TV supports Dolby Digital... Both my PS3 and 360 plays surround sound, and while PS3 supports PCM and bitstreaming I'm pretty sure the 360 only supports Dolby Digital Surround. Even DD-certified Wii games have semi-surround with my setup!

That's why I'm sure there must be a workaround to get this to work properly without having to change my setup, since all of my consoles works effortlessly and strangest of all Windows Media Center being able to get them to work when I do that speaker test... I'm thinking there might be some codecs I could install or some driver... However, I'm not sure what kind of driver that would be since it's my graphics card outputting the sound? I've already tried installing the latest Realtek drivers, didn't help.
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