Complications with Receiver, HDMI Audio, and 1440p Monitor

Apr 24, 2015
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Ok, so this is a long one.

So I discovered that I was never actually getting 5.1 surround sound on my PC through my receiver when I had it hooked up through an optical output. Found out that this is a common mistake, as the encoding is different when used through optical. Who knew?

I opted to instead go for an HDMI cable, but was stumped when I realized that my NVIDIA card would refuse to play sound unless it was creating an active display. I tried routing a second HDMI cable from my receiver to my monitor, but it appears my receiver got confused over the 1440p resolution and would insist that my resolution was actually 4k. I decided that was probably not good, so I nixed that.

I then disconnected the monitor from the receiver, hooked it up through a display port, then created a phantom screen from my receiver which I duplicated the main display on. I thought I had it licked, but I discovered that for some reason or another I was limited to 30 frames per second on 1440p.

Currently, I am routing the display of a side 1080p monitor through the receiver, which gives me the audio I want, but there are times that I would like to be able to disable the side monitors so my GPU can focus entirely on the main monitor. All in all, a very confusing situation.

Ideally, I'd like the ability to disable the requirement of having HDMI audio requiring a working display. Does anyone have any suggestions? Let me know if anyone needs any clarification.
 
The optical audio does support 5.1 audio so the issue is in the PC. Enter "PC optical out surround sound" in the search bar at top of this page. You will see a variety of people with the same issue. Different solutions show up. You might need a soundcard that supports surround through optical audio out.