Solved! Can my Onkyo AV receiver play audio only over HDMI?

[gijoe50000]

I picked up a TX-SR606 receiver for cheap on eBay and it just arrived today.
I was trying, for ages, to get sound over HDMI from my pc, but I didn't succeed until I put the receiver in passthrough mode (not sure if that made a difference) and I disconnected my display port from my pc->monitor.

I have a 4k monitor usually connected to my pc via display port, and I was assuming that I could just send my pc audio to the receiver through HDMI, and totally forget about the video side of the receiver.

So far though, it's looking like the receiver MUST send audio and video to the monitor, for the receiver to play audio; and the monitor MUST be set to actually show the HDMI video output from the receiver, and the display port must be unplugged.

As soon as I plug the display port back in, the audio immediately shuts off and the receiver says "no signal". Even though the "green bars" in Sound Properties on the pc are still bouncing away.

Is this always the case?

I'm sure there are some workarounds, like getting a second monitor, and plugging the HDMI output into it, just to keep the receiver happy, or maybe getting some other kind of dummy HDMI input for it, but this seems crazy.

Is there some kind of setting or option that I'm missing? Is this a common issue?

I know I could just use the optical jack instead, but the quality and options are a little inferior to HDMI, right? Less bitrate, and I'd be missing TrueHD, etc..

This is my first AV receiver, I just started getting a bit more serious about audio lately, but I know my way around the pc fairly well. It'd be nice to know if I'm missing something totally obvious here. I don't even have a TV, I do everything through the pc.

 

[kerberos_20]

mine tv also cant play only audio when video is cut (turn of monitor from windows / power feature)
only workaround which i could think of right now would be to duplicate your screen to your receiver (win key + p, then pick duplicate and disable monitor turnoff in power settings)

 

[gijoe50000]

mine tv also cant play only audio when video is cut (turn of monitor from windows / power feature)
only workaround which i could think of right now would be to duplicate your screen to your receiver (win key + p, then pick duplicate and disable monitor turnoff in power settings)

Hmm.. That's interesting. I'm just heading to bed there now, but I'll ponder it and see ifI can work it in the morning. I'm a bit dopey with tiredness now.. lol

 

[gijoe50000]

So I left this for a few days, waiting for some more speakers to arrive, and I finally set it up as 7.1 last night.
I was just using the optical connection, through the realtek onboard audio port, to see how it sounded and to setup Audyssey, and just get a general feel for the receiver. Without the hassle of also trying to get sound over hdmi.

Then earlier today I just plugged in the hdmi's, set my display to duplicate, I set the hdmi\receiver display to 1080i @30hz, in the Nvidia Control Panel (it was the recommended option). And set the default audio device to the receiver\Nvidia hdmi option in Windows Sounds.

Then I switched my monitor to display hdmi, it had a display, and then Iswitched it back again to the 4k display port.

Not sure exactly which step sorted this, but it's working fine now.

I didn't need to reboot the pc, or turn off the display, or receiver or anything. It just works!

I'm thinking that maybe I didn't set it up as a display the first time in the NCP, and that I was just trying to push audio through the hdmi without video, through the receiver, and it was giving an error. Or maybe the resolution on the hdmi was not set correctly or something.

I don't think it was a fault with the hdmi ports (common with the 606) as it has non-original capacitors, so somebody must have already replaced them. And also, my pc always detected the receiver, and showed on screen that it was connected to TX-SR606 in NCP and Sounds, so the hdmi board was never totally dead, or slow to wake or anything.

So, problem solved, at least for the moment. Thanks for the help. It may very well have been the "duplicate display" option that sorted it too.. Who knows.

The receiver also seems to have a mind of it's own when it comes to sounds.. It sometimes switches between stereo and Dolby, etc, depending on what I'm listening to. So it seems to be interacting with the pc. It's pretty cool.

 

[gijoe50000]

Just a little update to this:
I was doing some messing around for the last few days with Nvidia drivers and Windows etc, and I somehow lost the HDMI connection between the PC and the receiver.

I just got it sorted again, and what I was doing wrong was that, in the Nvidia Control Panel, under Change Resolution, I had the Onkyo set to display 1080p instead of 1080i.

It's just something simple, but maybe it'll help somebody in the future.