5.1 Audio from Games PC
August 1, 2015 11:13 AM Subscribe
I have a reasonably up-to-date Windows 7 games PC connected to a TV and a receiver. All works well, but my game audio is in stereo and I'd really like it to be 5.1 surround. Help me achieve more pew pew and less QQ. Snowflakes inside.
First, here is the equipment I have right now:
Games PC with ASUS Z97-E mobo, NVidia GeForce GTX 660 and ASUS Xonar DG sound card. (Link to full specs from Piriform Speccy.)
Vizio GV47L TV. (Link to EDID data from EnTech MonInfo.)
Onkyo TX-SR307 receiver (with 5.1 speakers).
Video path is: PC - (HDMI) - Receiver - (HDMI) - TV. The video part works great. I have never gotten the receiver to do anything to or with audio sent over HDMI. I don't think it can. The manual contains the damning text: "Audio signals received by the HDMI IN jacks are output only by the HDMI OUT (Pass-Thru). HDMI sources are not output by the speakers connected to the AV receiver."
Audio path is currently: Sound card - (TOSLINK optical cable) - Receiver
This works, in the sense that sound comes out. If I use a source with pre-encoded DTS or Dolby Digital, I do indeed get 5.1. However, games are 2.0 only.
Things I have tried:
Using a riser board to get digital audio from the on-board audio chipset of the motherboard to an optical output: Same results as above. (I probably don't need the sound card -- its presence is just an artifact of my latest attempts to solve this problem.)
Connecting the optical digital audio output on the TV to the receiver: I get 2.0 audio. The NVIDIA card thinks the TV is a 2.0 device, because the TV tells it so in the EDID block.
Running six analog cables from the sound card (or motherboard) analog outputs to the receiver: Nope. The only analog audio inputs on the receiver are stereo (really!).
Goals:
I would like to 1) get decent 5.1 audio from PC games, 2) not spend an outlandish sum of money and 3) not spend any more money without a reasonable certainty of a good outcome. If I can 4) minimize the number of cables, 5) keep the signal digital all the way to the receiver and/or 6) not depend on grotesque hackery that will break with the next driver update, that's a bonus.
Possible solutions I've considered, in descending order of perceived attractiveness:
1) Buy a new receiver that understands audio sent via HDMI. (This probably means that the receiver has to fudge the audio and speaker allocation parts of the EDID block.) Hopefully that would let me do away with the TOSLINK stuff and extra sound card. Challenge: How do I pick a receiver? What buzzword(s) should I look for when searching? (Con: Expensive. Pro: Will need to do so anyway in a few years when I upgrade to 4K.)
2) Get a new sound card with support for DTS Connect, DTS Interactive and/or Dolby Digital Live, such as the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Recond3D PCIe. Challenge: Would this actually do what I expect? Would my receiver understand the encoded audio?
3) Get some kind of HDMI-to-(HDMI plus TOSLINK) splitter like this one. (Not sure that would help; I think my current receiver only understands DTS and Dolby Digital, so I suspect I'm boned unless I either replace it with one that does raw-PCM-over-HDMI, or add something that can encode DTS on the fly.)
4) Go back to the "TV optical audio out back to receiver" thing, and try to fool the NVidia driver into thinking there's a 5.1 system there via a hacked EDID block. (See above re: receiver needing DTS or Dolby Digital and there still being nothing to encode that.)
5) Upgrade (sidegrade?) to Windows 10 and see if that makes things magically better somehow. (Pro: Planning to install it anyway. Con: Virtually certain it won't help.)
6) Go to bed and read a book.
7) Play PC games with stereo sound like a chump.
8) Swear off all technology forever.
9) Get an XBone and play Madden with a cadre of racist 13-year-olds and your mum.
First, here is the equipment I have right now:
Games PC with ASUS Z97-E mobo, NVidia GeForce GTX 660 and ASUS Xonar DG sound card. (Link to full specs from Piriform Speccy.)
Vizio GV47L TV. (Link to EDID data from EnTech MonInfo.)
Onkyo TX-SR307 receiver (with 5.1 speakers).
Video path is: PC - (HDMI) - Receiver - (HDMI) - TV. The video part works great. I have never gotten the receiver to do anything to or with audio sent over HDMI. I don't think it can. The manual contains the damning text: "Audio signals received by the HDMI IN jacks are output only by the HDMI OUT (Pass-Thru). HDMI sources are not output by the speakers connected to the AV receiver."
Audio path is currently: Sound card - (TOSLINK optical cable) - Receiver
This works, in the sense that sound comes out. If I use a source with pre-encoded DTS or Dolby Digital, I do indeed get 5.1. However, games are 2.0 only.
Things I have tried:
Using a riser board to get digital audio from the on-board audio chipset of the motherboard to an optical output: Same results as above. (I probably don't need the sound card -- its presence is just an artifact of my latest attempts to solve this problem.)
Connecting the optical digital audio output on the TV to the receiver: I get 2.0 audio. The NVIDIA card thinks the TV is a 2.0 device, because the TV tells it so in the EDID block.
Running six analog cables from the sound card (or motherboard) analog outputs to the receiver: Nope. The only analog audio inputs on the receiver are stereo (really!).
Goals:
I would like to 1) get decent 5.1 audio from PC games, 2) not spend an outlandish sum of money and 3) not spend any more money without a reasonable certainty of a good outcome. If I can 4) minimize the number of cables, 5) keep the signal digital all the way to the receiver and/or 6) not depend on grotesque hackery that will break with the next driver update, that's a bonus.
Possible solutions I've considered, in descending order of perceived attractiveness:
1) Buy a new receiver that understands audio sent via HDMI. (This probably means that the receiver has to fudge the audio and speaker allocation parts of the EDID block.) Hopefully that would let me do away with the TOSLINK stuff and extra sound card. Challenge: How do I pick a receiver? What buzzword(s) should I look for when searching? (Con: Expensive. Pro: Will need to do so anyway in a few years when I upgrade to 4K.)
2) Get a new sound card with support for DTS Connect, DTS Interactive and/or Dolby Digital Live, such as the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Recond3D PCIe. Challenge: Would this actually do what I expect? Would my receiver understand the encoded audio?
3) Get some kind of HDMI-to-(HDMI plus TOSLINK) splitter like this one. (Not sure that would help; I think my current receiver only understands DTS and Dolby Digital, so I suspect I'm boned unless I either replace it with one that does raw-PCM-over-HDMI, or add something that can encode DTS on the fly.)
4) Go back to the "TV optical audio out back to receiver" thing, and try to fool the NVidia driver into thinking there's a 5.1 system there via a hacked EDID block. (See above re: receiver needing DTS or Dolby Digital and there still being nothing to encode that.)
5) Upgrade (sidegrade?) to Windows 10 and see if that makes things magically better somehow. (Pro: Planning to install it anyway. Con: Virtually certain it won't help.)
6) Go to bed and read a book.
7) Play PC games with stereo sound like a chump.
8) Swear off all technology forever.
9) Get an XBone and play Madden with a cadre of racist 13-year-olds and your mum.
Best answer: Just get a new receiver that supports multichannel PCM audio over HDMI. I like Onkyo. A TX-SR6xx (or NR6xx) or above will definitely support HDMI audio processing, not just pass through.
There may exist some Windows software that will encode DD or DTS 5.1 from games and shove it out TOSLINK, but that's a horrendous kludge that will eat up CPU time and result in not-great sound quality anyway. TOSLINK only has enough bandwidth for 2 channels of uncompressed PCM, which is why you have to use DD or DTS compression to get 5.1 across it. On looking, it does exist, but seems to be a horrific hack that may result in objectionably high audio latency.
A lot of games do (or at least used to) have support for Prologic matrix encoding, so you can get surround(ish) sound from 2 channels if your receiver supports it. Most do, since it's been around since the 80s. The separation isn't nearly as good as discrete channels, but it does work to get some surround sound effect.
posted by wierdo at 2:47 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
There may exist some Windows software that will encode DD or DTS 5.1 from games and shove it out TOSLINK, but that's a horrendous kludge that will eat up CPU time and result in not-great sound quality anyway. TOSLINK only has enough bandwidth for 2 channels of uncompressed PCM, which is why you have to use DD or DTS compression to get 5.1 across it. On looking, it does exist, but seems to be a horrific hack that may result in objectionably high audio latency.
A lot of games do (or at least used to) have support for Prologic matrix encoding, so you can get surround(ish) sound from 2 channels if your receiver supports it. Most do, since it's been around since the 80s. The separation isn't nearly as good as discrete channels, but it does work to get some surround sound effect.
posted by wierdo at 2:47 PM on August 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Around black friday a year or two ago i picked up a fairly excellent pioneer receiver for like $230(it might have been more with a "free" included sub i thought i wanted, but that price was an option) on sale.
There was a huge tidal wave of decent pioneer/harmon/sony/onkyo type well-regarded-brand receivers just getting utterly dumped on the market around that time of year while the new models with 4k upscaling and turboultrasoundXT or whatever silly audio processing feature or wireless audio spec they wanted to tout in the next gen was being rolled out.
If you can wait a couple months, just do that. Basically any of those brands 3rd from the bottom of the ladder or up receivers are decent quality, and occasionally the fairly awesome stuff(IE: pioneer elite) gets down in the ~$300 range too. Last i checked most brands had basically the same rated wattage, and probably the same actual amplifiers internally for most of their lower to upper midrange models, with only the super-expensive stuff and the really cheapo stuff having significantly different specs. The only difference was how many jacks you got(or the bump from 5.1 to 7.1) and how fancy the firmware/software features were with regards to streaming stuff from your phone or whatever.
I have a slightly older version of this, which looks like it's on sale because... a new model came out. I haven't looked in to how exactly the EDID fudging works but it'll do surround directly out of my AMD video card the instant it's plugged in, with no fiddling. Jam the cord in, shows up in windows as multiple channels.
amusingly, i don't actually have more than two speakers plugged in to the thing and haven't for quite a while. What a waste, now you're making me want to set it all up again and game in surround sound.
posted by emptythought at 4:22 AM on August 2, 2015
There was a huge tidal wave of decent pioneer/harmon/sony/onkyo type well-regarded-brand receivers just getting utterly dumped on the market around that time of year while the new models with 4k upscaling and turboultrasoundXT or whatever silly audio processing feature or wireless audio spec they wanted to tout in the next gen was being rolled out.
If you can wait a couple months, just do that. Basically any of those brands 3rd from the bottom of the ladder or up receivers are decent quality, and occasionally the fairly awesome stuff(IE: pioneer elite) gets down in the ~$300 range too. Last i checked most brands had basically the same rated wattage, and probably the same actual amplifiers internally for most of their lower to upper midrange models, with only the super-expensive stuff and the really cheapo stuff having significantly different specs. The only difference was how many jacks you got(or the bump from 5.1 to 7.1) and how fancy the firmware/software features were with regards to streaming stuff from your phone or whatever.
I have a slightly older version of this, which looks like it's on sale because... a new model came out. I haven't looked in to how exactly the EDID fudging works but it'll do surround directly out of my AMD video card the instant it's plugged in, with no fiddling. Jam the cord in, shows up in windows as multiple channels.
amusingly, i don't actually have more than two speakers plugged in to the thing and haven't for quite a while. What a waste, now you're making me want to set it all up again and game in surround sound.
posted by emptythought at 4:22 AM on August 2, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks to all those who replied. The thrilling denouement: I found a refurb Onkyo TX-SR605 from an Amazon third-party seller for $140. (No remote, but I have a universal remote.) It should arrive tomorrow (Tuesday 04 August); I'll follow up here once I get it installed.
posted by sourcequench at 10:43 AM on August 3, 2015
posted by sourcequench at 10:43 AM on August 3, 2015
Response by poster: Well, poop. I checked my Amazon order just now and it was showing as cancelled (apparently by the reseller "astrit koka", certainly not by me). May a pox be on their houses.
So I'm stepping up to the Onkyo TX-NR636 (from a different vendor). Hopefully here by the weekend. First-world problems, delayed gratification edition.
posted by sourcequench at 12:24 PM on August 4, 2015
So I'm stepping up to the Onkyo TX-NR636 (from a different vendor). Hopefully here by the weekend. First-world problems, delayed gratification edition.
posted by sourcequench at 12:24 PM on August 4, 2015
Response by poster: Got the TX-NR636 installed and working. It definitively solved the PC audio problem. No TOSLINK cables, no extra sound card, no weird hacks or non-obvious settings. Just PC -(HDMI)- Receiver -(HDMI)- TV and it all just works.
If you're curious, the receiver does indeed replace the "CE audio data (formats supported)" and "CE speaker allocation data" parts of the EDID block sent by the TV.
The only problem, if there has to be one, is that the manual was not kidding about needing 8" of clearance above the unit for ventilation.
Thanks again to all upthread.
posted by sourcequench at 9:31 PM on August 7, 2015
If you're curious, the receiver does indeed replace the "CE audio data (formats supported)" and "CE speaker allocation data" parts of the EDID block sent by the TV.
The only problem, if there has to be one, is that the manual was not kidding about needing 8" of clearance above the unit for ventilation.
Thanks again to all upthread.
posted by sourcequench at 9:31 PM on August 7, 2015
Response by poster: Update to the update: The Onkyo TX-NR636 developed a deal-killing overheating problem, shutting down at random after ~1hr of being on. Back it went. (Before you ask: Cool room. Several feet of open space on every side of the receiver. Speaker impedance measured and correct on all channels. Wiring and connections good. Zone 2 off. Tried reset to factory defaults. Internal fan spins, but doesn't help.)
Now using a Sony STR-DH550, which also solves this particular problem nicely. (It modifies the same parts of the EDID info as did the Onkyo.)
posted by sourcequench at 6:19 PM on August 11, 2015
Now using a Sony STR-DH550, which also solves this particular problem nicely. (It modifies the same parts of the EDID info as did the Onkyo.)
posted by sourcequench at 6:19 PM on August 11, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/145-htpc-gaming/966518-evga-680-sli-built-sound-optical-output-can-t-get-5-1-output.html
posted by kschang at 11:52 AM on August 1, 2015