My 5.1 home theater only works under quadraphonic setting in Dell Laptop

[Leojag]

Sorry if I'm Spamming.. Feel like I posted in the wrong section previously...
I have a LG HDTV in my house. My home theater is Philips HTD3520G/94. My HT does not have a HDMI-in port and my TV does not have an optical-out port. I use a hdmi splitter with optical out to connect my DTH to my TV and HT. I also connect my laptop to one of the ports on my HDMI Matrix. The problem is I am not able to configure the HT on my laptop and set it to 5.1. When I configure it as 5.1 surround, on DTS encoded movies I am only able to here the background soundtrack. When I set it to quadraphonic, it works. But I am sure I am not hearing 5.1 sound. Besides when I do a youtube sound test, nothing comes out of the LFE Channel when it is set in either quadraphonic or 5.1.

I have a Dell laptop and I run Windows 8.1.

What am i missing??


Update: Forgot to mention that on testing in the speaker configuration setting dialogue box sound does not come out properly in either of the settings.

 

[Rogue Leader]

It will be helpful if you provide the model of your dell laptop as well as the brand and model of your HDMI switch.

I will tell you right now off the top of my head there may not be a good answer to this. One of the detractors of HDMI is all sorts of handshake issues and things like that when passing through other devices. AV Receivers generally have this down pat, but people with not as deep pockets or who don't care as much (like Dell), sometimes miss little things in the setup and design that doesn't allow unique setups like this to work.

 

[Leojag]

Thanks for the response..
My dell model number is Inspiron 15 3521.
The HDMI Switch is a chinese one i picked up online. It does not have a model number as such. It goes by the name HDMI True HiFi 4x2 Matrix.

Really appreciate your help..

It will be helpful if you provide the model of your dell laptop as well as the brand and model of your HDMI switch.

I will tell you right now off the top of my head there may not be a good answer to this. One of the detractors of HDMI is all sorts of handshake issues and things like that when passing through other devices. AV Receivers generally have this down pat, but people with not as deep pockets or who don't care as much (like Dell), sometimes miss little things in the setup and design that doesn't allow unique setups like this to work.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Ok so I looked up your equipment online. The switch does say it passes 5.1 audio which is good.

So now I'm confused, your TV you want to play on the home theater but it doesn't have an optical out? (I've never seen a HDTV without one but I guess its possible), Is there another device in this chain that I am missing?

Also the fact you are only getting part of the sound, do you have all your speakers hooked up correctly and you did the phillips initial system setup first to correctly configure them?

That you are getting part of the sound tells me its a configuration issue on the Phillips home theater side. If it was with the box or laptop it would be locked to 2 channel or it wouldn't work at all.

 

[Leojag]

It does support 5.1 audio. The thing is when i got the HDTV, I dint research properly and got the one which had no capacity to do digital out. So I had to get the switch since my HT does not have a HDMI-in port.
The connection is pretty straight forward. The switch has four In Ports to which I connect my laptop apart from my DTH Box. It has a HDMI out which is connected to my TV. The Switch also simultaneously supports Optical. So basically, the switch sends the Input Video+Audio >> audio to my HT through optical and Video to HDTV. So I guess there is nothing missing in the chain.

As far as the connection on my HT, all the speakers are hooked up properly.
And what setups are you referring to? I plugged up everything when I got the HT and Boom!! it worked. I might be missing something but I dont remember any specific setup that was mentioned in the manual.

Anyways, I though it might be a driver issue since the Microsoft HD Audio driver gets installed which might not be the correct one. But ofcourse I'm not an expert.

Ok so I looked up your equipment online. The switch does say it passes 5.1 audio which is good.

So now I'm confused, your TV you want to play on the home theater but it doesn't have an optical out? (I've never seen a HDTV without one but I guess its possible), Is there another device in this chain that I am missing?

Also the fact you are only getting part of the sound, do you have all your speakers hooked up correctly and you did the phillips initial system setup first to correctly configure them?

That you are getting part of the sound tells me its a configuration issue on the Phillips home theater side. If it was with the box or laptop it would be locked to 2 channel or it wouldn't work at all.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Ok and then to confirm, if you watch something with 5.1 audio on your Cable box, that optical cable is providing audio to your home theater and its working in 5.1 right? The Laptop is basically connected in the same fashion, but the audio is not 5.1 right? Is there a display on the home theater unit that tells you what type of signal is playing? Also does the box also pass the audio output back to the TV?

 

[Leojag]

Yep it does support 5.1 through DTH. Like you said, the laptop is connected in the same fashion as the Cable box.
There is no display on the HT which tells me if I am playing 5.1 or 2 CHannel. There is a digital display which just tells me the audio source like if its optical, aux or BT...

The HDMI matrix also passes sound to the TV. But I have disabled TV sounds in the TV menu coz it sounds a little lame when I use it together with my HT.

Ok and then to confirm, if you watch something with 5.1 audio on your Cable box, that optical cable is providing audio to your home theater and its working in 5.1 right? The Laptop is basically connected in the same fashion, but the audio is not 5.1 right? Is there a display on the home theater unit that tells you what type of signal is playing? Also does the box also pass the audio output back to the TV?

 

[Rogue Leader]

Ok, There are one of two possibilities here. One is that audio driver, that does make sense, do you have all the newest driver for your motherboard especially the GPU as that one can affect sound processing through the HDMI. The other issue is that the data stream coming from a PC is different than that from a DTV box, and the switch is having an issue decoding it. You may want to consider something like this, instead of what you have to get the audio signal out of your PC and to the Home Theater:

http/www.turtlebeach.com/product-detail/sound-cards-accessories/audio-advantage-micro-ii/31

 

[Leojag]

I updated all my drivers to the latest available this morning and the issue still seemed to persist. I contacted the Manufacturer through Email asking him if a driver is avaialble.
The other option looks good. But then I would have to unplug and replug my optical port on HT everytime coz I would have two Optical Ins to my HT now.

Is it the only option??

Ok, There are one of two possibilities here. One is that audio driver, that does make sense, do you have all the newest driver for your motherboard especially the GPU as that one can affect sound processing through the HDMI. The other issue is that the data stream coming from a PC is different than that from a DTV box, and the switch is having an issue decoding it. You may want to consider something like this, instead of what you have to get the audio signal out of your PC and to the Home Theater:

http/www.turtlebeach.com/product-detail/sound-cards-accessories/audio-advantage-micro-ii/31

 

[Rogue Leader]

Thats the only one I can think of, if you can confirm you are getting a DD 5.1 out from your laptop I just don't see any other way around it.

If you do this you can get one of these too to make it easier:

http/smile.amazon.com/Rerii-Switcher-Compatible-Guarantee-Fulfilled/dp/B00RF8F212/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1445015625&sr=8-2&keywords=optical+switch

 

[Leojag]

Thanks a lot.. I will wait for the reply from the manufacturer before buying..

Thanks a ton!!

Thats the only one I can think of, if you can confirm you are getting a DD 5.1 out from your laptop I just don't see any other way around it.

If you do this you can get one of these too to make it easier:

http/smile.amazon.com/Rerii-Switcher-Compatible-Guarantee-Fulfilled/dp/B00RF8F212/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1445015625&sr=8-2&keywords=optical+switch

 

[Rogue Leader]

No problem. Unfortunately like I said, a lot of times these mixed connections don't always work out the way they should.