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Basically, the TV only supports 2 channel PCM so it reports to the pc that it is only capable of 2 channel sound over HDMI as the GPU doesn't encode the game audio to 5.1 dobly digital or DTS.
The xbox does encode the audio before sending it over HDMI so is able to send an encoded audio stream which the TV is capable of sending to the reciever via HDMI.
My amp (Yamaha RX-V483) has 4 HDMI ports. It supports pretty much every codec out there except Dolby Atmos.
I did know about SPDIF and HDMI's limitations. However the biggest difference between those two formats is that HDMI supports uncompressed audio up to 7.1 and my hopes were that if the TV received that kind of signal from the PC that it would push out via ARC. I confess that I did not check ARC's limitations though.
I did notice that with the latest version of VLC, when playing MKV files in Dolby it would pass on to the receiver. I understand what is going on now.
This is how I'm using now, however, my receiver adds some lagging. It has a "Direct" option that turns off all enhancements, but it still adds lagging anyway. That on top of the lagging from the TV just adds up. I know, if you want to play competitive games you should stay away from TVs altogether and stick to monitors and even CRTs, however I don't mind a bit of lagging. The receiver combined with the TV adds a lot more than I'm comfortable with though.
My sound card is a Creative Sound Blaster Z. I've had it for 3 years exactly. The breaking problem started around 6 months ago. I got a new SPDIF cable, no change. I also got a SPDIF to Coaxial adaptor that supposedly has a signal booster and it also didn't work.
The interesting thing about this sound breaking thing with my Sound Blaster is that it only happens when I'm using DTS or Dolby. PCM stereo audio works just fine.
GPUs can output surround sound, yes. With the PC connected to the receiver, Windows shows all possible codecs. Including the weirdo WMA Pro (if I'm not mistaken). It also lets me set the speaker layout up to 7.1 even though the receiver is only 5.1. And I get brilliant 5.1 audio when playing games.
The reason I'm leaving the "buy a new sound card" option for my very last step is that 1) There are only two manufacturers that are really serious about making sound cards in the market at the moment: Asus and Creative. And neither seems to care that much about their products. Creative still offers the very same cards it did when I got mine 3 years ago, and to spend this much money for a new card just to, in 3 years' time or less, start having problems again doesn't seem smart. The ones made by Asus look ok, however only the high end ones have on the fly DTS/DD encoding, and they're not only expensive, they also don't seem easy to find in the UK.
So, I tried the ARC route and it failed. This is clear.
I also tried an HDMI audio extractor. Got it from Amazon. Thing claims to support HDR/WCG,4K@60Hz and it does. However when it comes to audio... same drama. It has an EDID selector, but it doesn't seem to work. I deleted entries in the registry to force Windows to re-detect the monitors, but it would not see the HDMI Audio Extractor, but the TV behind it. Returned for refund.
I also tried running two HDMI cables from the PC. One to the TV and another to the receiver. Even though Windows technically lets me choose which audio device to set as default (it shows 4 for the GTX 1070) it would not let me split video and audio. Even if the default audio device was the one going to the receiver, it would still send audio together with the video signal. Fail!
So the options I have left now are:
1) Get an HDMI Splitter. These things are not cheap for 4K@60/HDR/WCG. But technically I could get one end to go to the TV and another one to the receiver. But reviews on Amazon are depressing to read. I only found two viable candidates and I don't trust either.
2) Get some kind of device that would take the analog audio that goes out to the PC speakers on my desk, converts them to either DTS or Dolby and send via the optical cable.
3) Re-enable my onboard sound card, that also has a SPDIF out, and find some software that would encode audio from "Default Speakers" on the fly and send to the optical out port.***
4) Suck it up, leave the PC connected to the amp, and have to go in the TV's menu and toggle Game Mode on and off as needed.
5) Suck it up, plug the PC to the TV, put up with stereo and hope to god the next games I play get passthrough to work.
*** on a side note, what is the effing point in putting a spdif port in your sound card, if you won't have any kind of on the fly encoding. say what you may about Creative, I think they're a shadow now of what they once were, but their approach to on the fly encoding is by far the smartest solution for this problem.
Right. In order to do that I would have to re-enable my onboard sound card and take out the Sound Blaster. Although this is kind of my option 3, my concern with this approach is...
How would it work exactly? Would it convert all audio to Dolby and send to optical? Kinda like what the Sound Blaster does? The Sound Blaster card does that via hardware. It does (did) add some delay but it was minimal. With this approach the conversion would be done via software. That would be taxing on the system and probably add even more delay.
Also, the only "Dolby" I see in the store is Dolby Access which is exclusively for Dolby Atmos. The one type of Dolby my receiver doesn't like. It takes Dolby Digital, Digital Plus, Pro Logic, TrueHD, but not Atmos.
Once I was done ranting here, I went online to do a bit of searching. I came across some people talking about some hacked drivers for RealTek cards but someone claimed my specific one didn't need it as it already had built-in Dolby support. I'm not sure that's true, though. My motherboard is ROG Strix B350-F for Ryzen 1800x with "ROG SupremeFX 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC S1220A", sounds fancy, eh? Well it's ♥♥♥♥ really, however...
It turns out that there's some drivers going around that were released by Dolby themselves that work on most RealTek cards. I got hold of them, opened my case, took out my Sound Blaster, moved the cables to the onboard sound card, restarted Windows, uninstalled all drivers for the Sound Blaster and Nvidia Audio, rebooted again without the driver signature requirement, installed the Dolby Drivers and, boy! It works! It damn works!
It has this really cool control panel that lets you adjust equaliser settings, it has some other cool settings as well. Apparently all you have to do is go in the sound settings, double click on Digital Audio (S/PDIF), then on Advanced, and in the Default Format drop down menu select Dolby Digital. That's it. Absolutely gorgeous 5.1 audio.
I've been playing for the past half an hour and sound didn't break once. Which confirms my theory that the cable is fine and it was the Sound Blaster card that was banged.
If anyone has RealTek audio, I suggest getting these drivers.
Thank you for the suggestions. It really helped!
The only problem with that is now you have to boot up with driver signing disabled, manually, every time you start up the computer. And if you forget one day it doesn't work until you reboot and re-do it manually. This isn't an option for most people. Also by using unsigned drivers you're seriously compromising the stability and security of your system. Now any file you download off the internet can install any "driver" in your computer that does anything without having to pass windows security first and bypassing security checks. In general that's a VeryBadIdea. My HTPC in the living room for 5.1 surround just uses windows 7, normal WHQL audio drivers, hdmi out over the video card, and it automatically gets 5.1 to the stereo receiver over hdmi just fine when we watch movies. No driver signing disabled nothing to do anything special. It just works. But only for movies, no games nothing else works.
Something I think you forgot to realize, even if you get dolby drivers working on your system, and even if you get the receiver to "Sync" at dolby and show 5.1 support, none of that matters because 98% of windows games don't output dolby 5.1 audio anyway. Most games only output 2 channel stereo anyway. So if all you're doing is gaming.. all that work and effort for nothing in the end.
@OP:
If you want surround sound all the time, use an audio card that will playback the signal sent to the headphone jack speaker ports through a didital connection to the receiver. And set that Receiver to NeoDTS.6 or Dolby Prologic II. Doing this will allow your 2.0 surround sound games to simulate 5.1 surround sound, and let your 5.1 surround sound setup to play audio in games that support 5.1 surround sound.
I have a Creative Soundblaster Omni that does this. Some of the newer external and internal audio cards from Creative will allow it.
To answer your question, your average game console supports some form of 5.1 surround sound because the games you play on them do. If you want the PC to detect your speaker setup as 5.1 surround sound, you will need an audio card (external or internal) to encode the audio so your receiver can decode it.
The following devices allow you to run what the speakers jakcs are playing through the S/PDIF optical out.
https://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-omni-surround-5-1
https://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-digital-music-premium-hd
Hey, no, you're mistaken on a couple of points there. I already knew what was going to happen but I double checked by restarting Windows a few times. Once the unsigned driver is installed, it just is. You restart your PC and the signed driver enforcement is back on but the driver you installed is already there and will work. Microsoft wouldn't've done any other way as they know people rely on old hardware.
As for stabilty and security, everything in life is a compromise. Thankfully, my system is just as stable. It is not just a gaming machine, I use this rig for design and video editing and everything is fine. Although in my 24 years in IT I've never used anti-virus software and only caught a virus once, I know the risk and got the drivers checked through VirusTotal before I used them. The drivers weren't signed for my specific hardware but they were signed by Dolby. I did not get any yellow warnings. I could never go back to Windows 7. I would lose on a lot of things I rely on that I can only get on at least Windows 8.1.
As for the 98% of Windows games don't support 5.1 comment... I'm sorry but you couldn't be more wrong. Surround sound in games, especially the ones where you could have enemies coming from behind is not a luxury and developers know that. Even without specific Dolby support, the games that support more than stereo simply through DirectX (and there are a lot of them https://satsun.org/audio) with these Dolby drivers I got whatever what was to come out in 5.1 from my desktop speakers will come out in Dolby through optical, and that's what I needed.
I have surround sound all the time. I've always had it through the analog speakers. I've been against the idea of buying a new sound card from the beginning. And as I said before, Creative is a shadow of what it once was and I don't trust it anymore. Before my SoundBlaster Z's optical out port started playing up I had a few other problems, but I kept finding workarounds because of the card looked cute in the case, or because of nostalgia, or whatever reason I managed to convince myself that keeping that card was the smart decision. And two days ago when I actually looked for new cards to buy I realised that Creative is still selling the exact same cards they did 3, 4 years ago, That was when I realised I had to find another way to get this thing working. Today I'm glad to shove that card in the bin, and the lesson I learn from this exercise is that just because something reminds you of a better past it doesn't mean it's still good.
And you're right. I need a sound card, I have the one that came built into my motherboard. The one I disabled the first time I booted up this kit the first time. It is sh**y but it'll do for now. In reality, the only real difference I can see now is that with the Sound Blaster, I wouldn't need to worry about sound going to which output. It simply cloned all audio from the PC to the optical port in DTS. Now, when I switch from desk to living room, I have to change the output, which Microsoft lets me do with just two clicks on Windows 10.
I am very, very, VERY happy with this solution.
The ironic part is that the original post where I found these drivers is from 2014. My motherboard at that time was another ROG for Intel that also had RealTek onboard audio. Coming to think about it, if I had come across that post, I wouldn't've had to get the Sound Blaster card, and I wouldn't be in this situation right now. The important thing is that it works, and works far, far better than I could've hoped for.
Not period. GPUs most certainly do output surround sound. As long as the connected device at least supports one of the multiple formats that Nvidia supports, you'll get surround.
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2796/~/which-hdmi-audio-formats-do-nvidia-gpus-support%3F
Dolby Digital 6 channels lossy compressed, DTS 5.1 6 channels lossy compressed, Multi channel LPCM 8 channels up to 24bit/192khz lossless uncompressed, Dolby TrueHD 8 channels lossless compressed, DTS-HD Master Audio 8 channels lossless compressed, Dolby Atmos 8 channels lossy/lossless compressed, and DTS:X 8 channels lossless compressed.
Plenty of surround support from the GPU.
That's what I read, but not how it worked. The official drivers won't even install a settings application or add something to Windows Control Panel, or even put an icon on my taskbar. It was literally bare drivers just to make the card work. There was no option of Dolby or DTS anywhere to be found. Only some people talking about it online like it's an urban legend. AFAIK the words Dolby and DTS aren't even in the motherboard's manual. It's not even mentioned in the motherboard's page (https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-B350-F-GAMING/specifications/) If this SupremeFX card supports any of these technologies Asus is making sure people don't know and don't use them. In reality, I just don't think it does.
Try these drivers.
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false
If that doesn’t work, you’re going to need one of the external DAC/Audio Cards I suggested.
Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectSound
And further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Audio_Architecture
Nothing in windows 10 actually supports Hardware-Level Dolby Digital Surround Sound, even with drivers. It's all software now.