Can't get sound from receiver to PC


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5 hours ago, mervincm said:

forgot a comment. you are a little loosy-goosy with your description, it might be part of why you have an issue.

 

eg your title is "Can't get sound from receiver to PC"

didn't you really mean the other way around?  don't you really mean that you can't get sound from PC to receiver?

 

when you say "When I plug the receiver directly into the PC via HMDI, "

didn't you mean plus your PC into your receiver? you want the sound to go FROM PC INTO receiver right?

 

You may think that its the same thing, but it is not.  some HDMI cables are unidirectional, you need to pay attention what direction your data is flowing.

 

 

I do mean from PC to receiver. I can't find anything on the HDMI itself that says which side is input and which side is output, but I'm assuming the same side that successfully inputs sound to my tv should be used to input sound to my receiver. However Windows does not successfully recognize it when it is plugged in, even if I try "scan for hardware changes" in device manager. Receiver is set to Digital input which has successfully transmitted sound from the tv and other devices plugged into the TV (the cable box, for instance) and has also successfully transmitted sound from my PC through the tv, but not with a 5.1 surround sound configuration.

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HDMI, VGA, and DVI uses the same import and output. They go either way.

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48 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

Except, HDMI cables CAN be directional.

Some, yes, but they are rare.

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23 hours ago, Draconis1 said:

I do mean from PC to receiver. I can't find anything on the HDMI itself that says which side is input and which side is output, but I'm assuming the same side that successfully inputs sound to my tv should be used to input sound to my receiver. However Windows does not successfully recognize it when it is plugged in, even if I try "scan for hardware changes" in device manager. Receiver is set to Digital input which has successfully transmitted sound from the tv and other devices plugged into the TV (the cable box, for instance) and has also successfully transmitted sound from my PC through the tv, but not with a 5.1 surround sound configuration.

If your HDMI cable is not marked, then likely it is not directional and thus cable direction is not your problem. maybe the problem is on your receiver.  When I set my receiver to digital input, that is only used for optical or SP/DIF digital inputs, NOT the same as HDMI input.  you need to set your receiver to HDMI input. So lets say you wanted to use the Bluray input on your receiver for PC. on your receiver you would assign say HDMI input#2 to the blueray input, and connect your HDMI cable between your nvidia card and your HDMI input#2 on the receiver.

 

 

You go OUT from your PC Into your Receiver.  In other words you connect an output on your NVidia card to an INPUT on your receiver.

 

I am not 100% sure about why you see a 2.0 channel, but there is an HDMI concept known as a return channel, that I think is usually only stereo audio in the reverse direction. It might explain what you are seeing.

 

Have you tried a replacement HDMI cable?

 

 

 

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12 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Some, yes, but they are rare.

 

Monoprice sells quite a few, and they tend to be the thinner more managable types. Still you are right, no one gets one of these for free in box cable, they are premium products and you usually know when you ordered it :)

 

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6 minutes ago, mervincm said:

 

You go OUT from your PC Into your Receiver.  In other words you connect an output on your NVidia card to an INPUT on your receiver.

 

I am not 100% sure about why you see a 2.0 channel, but there is an HDMI concept known as a return channel, that I think is usually only stereo audio in the reverse direction. It might explain what you are seeing.

 

Have you tried a replacement HDMI cable?

 

 

 

 

And again, I don't mean to be picky or a butt head head, but when I see people mixing up the terms input and output, It usually means they just didn't sit down and think about the direction the want the signal to flow.  I worked in a AV shop as my first job, I saw COUNTLESS cases when folks mixed up when then should use an input and when they should use an output. Add in some modern cables only work in one direction and you just need to get it right.

 

I remember saying your device can OUTPUT TO, our INPUT FROM, never OUTPUT FROM, or INPUT TO

 

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There is a fundamental lack of understanding here.

 

You are using a receiver which is expecting a digital 5.1 surround signal.

 

To get that signal it needs to be encoded onto a wire via hardware or software.

 

The standard audio encoding for 5.1 is Dolby. The receiver might take DTS as well, check the receiver specs.

 

The final piece of the puzzle is that even in 2017, Dolby charges a license fee for this encoding. Therefore you need a licensed encoder on the PC to send 5.1 to the receiver, otherwise you will get Stereo encoding.

 

I always make sure when I buy a mobo or sound card that it has a Dolby license. Since it is a premium feature, it is always listed in the spec for the mobo or sound card.

 

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15 hours ago, mervincm said:

 

And again, I don't mean to be picky or a butt head head, but when I see people mixing up the terms input and output, It usually means they just didn't sit down and think about the direction the want the signal to flow.  I worked in a AV shop as my first job, I saw COUNTLESS cases when folks mixed up when then should use an input and when they should use an output. Add in some modern cables only work in one direction and you just need to get it right.

 

I remember saying your device can OUTPUT TO, our INPUT FROM, never OUTPUT FROM, or INPUT TO

 

Tried 5 different HDMI cables, none of which are directional, but I tried using each of them both ways anyway. Receiver has no option for HDMI input, and the HDMI receives sound from the TV when I have the receiver set to function "digital input". the only other input options are "AUX" "FM" "BT" and "DVD"

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The exact name of the audio feature you absolutely mandatory need from the audio generating source otherwise known as a Sound Card or Motherboard Audio is "Dolby Digital Live" which permits all the audio sources on your computer in all it's myriad forms to be encoded into a 5.1 digital stream.

 

The only other way to get 5.1 from a PC to a Receiver is "pass thru" where the audio is already Dolby Encoded such as a DVD disk etc.

 

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You only need dolby digital live if you want to re-encode everything on your PC to Dolby Digital for your receiver to decode into 5.1. You are describing something usefull when you are using a toslink optical cable or a SPDif digital connector.  You don't need to live re-encode when you have HDMI connection and a receiver with the ability to handle your source material.

 

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speaker.png

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3 hours ago, Draconis1 said:

Receiver has no option for HDMI input

Then how are you putting HDMI into it? Some HDMI to something conversion? That would break any HDMI specs for audio most likely and cause an issue.

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3 hours ago, xendrome said:

Then how are you putting HDMI into it? Some HDMI to something conversion? That would break any HDMI specs for audio most likely and cause an issue.

Server has a list of "functions" for it to be running on. Physically, it has an HDMI in port that I've been using. However it has no software function for "HDMI input" I've just been using digital input with an HDMI connected to it, which works fine for my TV, but obviously not the PC.

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3 hours ago, mervincm said:

You only need dolby digital live if you want to re-encode everything on your PC to Dolby Digital for your receiver to decode into 5.1. You are describing something usefull when you are using a toslink optical cable or a SPDif digital connector.  You don't need to live re-encode when you have HDMI connection and a receiver with the ability to handle your source material.

 

 

It is extremely unlikely with PC audio going to a receiver that you won't need Dolby Digital Live.

 

Scenarios where you DON'T need Dolby Digital Live:

 

1. You give up on using a receiver and buy a 5.1 computer speaker system which happens surprisingly often since the general awareness of the need for Dolby Digital Live is strangely very low.

 

2. Your receiver has a 5 channel input selector and you run 5 wires from PC to Receiver similar to running 5 wires to a PC Speaker.

 

3. You run a standard digital audio cable to your receiver and conveniently by some strange miracle every possible media on your PC is stored in a previously encoded 5.1 channel format. This could happen if the only thing you play is a stack of DVD disks.

 

4. You run a standard digital audio cable to your receiver and test the connection with standard 5.1 media such as a DVD  and don't actually notice that most of your material is actually being transmitted in Stereo instead of 5.1 - This mistake is most likely to be caught by gamers who quickly realize the receiver is not giving them any positional audio in game.

 

 

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19 hours ago, DevTech said:

It is extremely unlikely with PC audio going to a receiver that you won't need Dolby Digital Live.

 

Scenarios where you DON'T need Dolby Digital Live:

 

1. You give up on using a receiver and buy a 5.1 computer speaker system which happens surprisingly often since the general awareness of the need for Dolby Digital Live is strangely very low.

 

2. Your receiver has a 5 channel input selector and you run 5 wires from PC to Receiver similar to running 5 wires to a PC Speaker.

 

3. You run a standard digital audio cable to your receiver and conveniently by some strange miracle every possible media on your PC is stored in a previously encoded 5.1 channel format. This could happen if the only thing you play is a stack of DVD disks.

 

4. You run a standard digital audio cable to your receiver and test the connection with standard 5.1 media such as a DVD  and don't actually notice that most of your material is actually being transmitted in Stereo instead of 5.1 - This mistake is most likely to be caught by gamers who quickly realize the receiver is not giving them any positional audio in game.

 

 

Would this solve my problem? https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Digital-SB0220/dp/B000Q78M7K/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1490485729&sr=1-4&keywords=sound+card+with+dolby+digital+live

 

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I'm skeptical that will solve my problem, because my mobo has all the same audio out ports as this motherboard, and when I plug AUX cables from my receiver into those ports, I get no audio. And even if my mobo doesn't support Dolby Digital Live, it should still be able to get standard stareo audio, just like it does from the TV.

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2 hours ago, Draconis1 said:

Everyone in the industry just hates to pay the license fee to Dolby Labs so you will find all sorts of very misleading and tricky stuff.

 

The key is to look for 3 trademarked words all in a row: "Dolby Digital LIve" - You will notice they are not in that description. Hence it will NOT work. There is no technical reason that audio card could not do the job but the license fee would make a low-end card appear far too expensive so the cost of "Dolby Digital Live" is hidden into the top-end audio cards and top end motherboards only.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Draconis1 said:

I haven't really read the whole thread ... but just FYI ... that sound card will not work in your system.  It is the "old school" PCI and the motherboard you listed in your original post does not have a PCI slot.

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6 minutes ago, DevTech said:

Everyone in the industry just hates to pay the license fee to Dolby Labs so you will find all sorts of very misleading and tricky stuff.

 

The key is to look for 3 trademarked words all in a row: "Dolby Digital LIve" - You will notice they are not in that description. Hence it will NOT work. There is no technical reason that audio card could not do the job but the license fee would make a low-end card appear far too expensive so the cost of "Dolby Digital Live" is hidden into the top-end audio cards and top end motherboards only.

 

 

I did a very quick look-around on Amazon to show you what to look for:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Recon3D-SB1350/dp/B00654PUPA/ref=pd_sbs_147_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FSCDFQ289DP54HJHQTDR

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E25KDK

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0018EFGTM

 

c26-B0018EFGTM-5-s.jpg

 

 

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3 hours ago, Draconis1 said:

I'm skeptical that will solve my problem, because my mobo has all the same audio out ports as this motherboard, and when I plug AUX cables from my receiver into those ports, I get no audio. And even if my mobo doesn't support Dolby Digital Live, it should still be able to get standard stareo audio, just like it does from the TV.

So all that means is that you have two problems.

 

1. Everybody which a receiver that does not have a 5 Channel input has the Dolby Digital Live problem.

 

2. You have a mixer problem of some sort in directing the right audio to the right output.

 

There is no point in debugging #2 if you haven't solved #1 unless you want to live with plain stereo output for a while since buying an audio card will bypass the #2 issue.

 

FWIW, the black or green audio jack on the mobo will be audio out.

-  Right click the speaker icon in systray and select "Playback Devices" 

-  Right click on "Speakers" for your mobo audio chip (it probably says Realtek) and select "Set as Default Device"

- close your audio/video player and open it again and you should hear sound on your AUX input

 

 

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18 hours ago, DevTech said:

The middle one looks like the cheapest option, but it doesn't have Dolby Digital Live, or atleast it doesn't specify that it does.

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21 hours ago, DevTech said:

So all that means is that you have two problems.

 

1. Everybody which a receiver that does not have a 5 Channel input has the Dolby Digital Live problem.

 

2. You have a mixer problem of some sort in directing the right audio to the right output.

 

There is no point in debugging #2 if you haven't solved #1 unless you want to live with plain stereo output for a while since buying an audio card will bypass the #2 issue.

 

FWIW, the black or green audio jack on the mobo will be audio out.

-  Right click the speaker icon in systray and select "Playback Devices" 

-  Right click on "Speakers" for your mobo audio chip (it probably says Realtek) and select "Set as Default Device"

- close your audio/video player and open it again and you should hear sound on your AUX input

 

 

So I just got a soundcard and added it to my PC. PROGRESS. Plugged the soundcard into my receiver, device detected, device configured for 5.1 surround. Seems all good right? WRONG!

Testing 5.1 surround sound shows 3 front speakers, 2 rear, and a sub. However when sound from the two so called "rear speakers" is playing during the test, sound continues to emit from my front speakers only. :,(

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On 3/24/2017 at 11:00 PM, DevTech said:

It is extremely unlikely with PC audio going to a receiver that you won't need Dolby Digital Live.

HDMI has never needed Dolby Digital Live for 5.1 channels of uncompressed audio.

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3 hours ago, Draconis1 said:

So I just got a soundcard and added it to my PC. PROGRESS. Plugged the soundcard into my receiver, device detected, device configured for 5.1 surround. Seems all good right? WRONG!

Testing 5.1 surround sound shows 3 front speakers, 2 rear, and a sub. However when sound from the two so called "rear speakers" is playing during the test, sound continues to emit from my front speakers only. :,(

Lack of information here.

 

Which soundcard did you get?

 

If you got a Creative with Dolby Digital Live capability, you need to go to the creative download area for the card and last time I looked there was an additional download for DDL but they change up their downloads a lot so it might be all in one again

 

Then you need to jump through some non-obvious config hoops which I suspect means they don't pay a license fee to Dolby Labs until you actually use it, which is the only reason I can think of to make an obviously needed and useful feature so incredibly hard to acquire and configure.

 

So even when you select Creative 5.1 Speakers for your output on the PC, DDL is still NOT enabled!

 

I will give you detailed steps if you confirm you have a DDL Creative card. Or you can poke around - the checkbox for it is buried a few levels deep...

 

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