Nvidia 5.1 to home theater

[Daniel Gall]

Ok this problem has been bugging me for months now, I have a Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 OC graphics card connected to my LG 3D TV and I cannot seem to get 5.1 surround sound to my home theater system, now I have read all the forums commenting on how it is impossible but I have used Plex home theater & get the full 5.1 surround in top quality in both Dolby Pro Logic II & DTS but when I try to do this with anything else windows 7 just doesn't have the option other than 2.0 stereo. As far as I can gather it has something to do with the EDID & LG TV's not having a wide range of audio capabilities but if I could force the audio on a software level by bypassing the EDID I know that I could achieve what I desire through a pass through directly to my surround sound system, I have tried plugging my PC in directly to my sound system but the PC still recognizes it as the LG TV as the sound system is still indirectly connected to the TV via HDMI. I don't have this issue with the Xbox 360 or the PS3 either as they can give me the full home theater effect with DTS & Dolby PL as well, it seems to be purely a Windows 7 PC problem.
My drivers & software are always up to date.

These are my hardware specs:

Motheboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Processor: Intel Core i5-3350P CPU @ 3.10GHz
Memory (RAM): 16.0 GB DDR3 (4 x 4 GB)
Graphics: GIGABYTE NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 OC 4GB GDDR5
PSU: Thermaltake TP-750MPCGAU
Hard Drives:-
Primary: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
7200RPM SATA 6Gbps 64MB Cache
Others:
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gbps 32MB Cache
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gbps 64MB Cache
Case: Sharkoon T28 Blue LED Gaming Case Front USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower PC Chassis
Monitor: LG 42LW5700-TA (Software Version: 05.10.02)
Home Theater System: Sherwood Audio/Video Receiver RD-6506

I have the PC connected via the HDMI to the TV with the TV running to the sound system via an optical cable, this setup can work as I have seen some programs "force" the audio & the issue seems to be software based & in relation to the EDID, the question is how can I do this by overriding the EDID or is there any programs that I haven't discovered yet to do this on a universal level with all my surround capable games & media players?

I have provided as much information as I can think of but if I have left anything out let me know.
Any information at all that can steer me in the right direction on my search will be greatly appreciated. Any solutions would be appreciated even more.

 

[ssddx]

you are correct.... a direct connection from pc to receiver with video passthrough to the tv should work fine.

this is how i personally connect up to my own home theater system

the receiver or hdmi output would need to be set as the default audio device and set to the correct surround mode. you can see what i personally use for my settings here (image is clickable)



typically sound is output from the pc in only a few modes:

-stereo, when just surfing the web or idling on windows. typical windows sounds are mono/stereo only and most web content is stereo only
-pcm, when playing games
-dolby, when playing movies with dolby content

 

[Daniel Gall]

Thanks for the reply but unfortunately I don't get that option, I even have an on-board 7.1 sound card but the only option I get on both is this:



The problem that I have is a very common one, my graphics card is 5.1 capable but from what I have learnt so far is that the EDID of the television may be effecting the drivers as LG is only licensed to use Dolby Digital but it isn't impossible to force the audio, one option is to get a HDMI emulator (eg: http/www.drhdmi.eu/specs.html) which is very costly for such a trivial problem. I have even tried unplugging the HDMI cable from the primary (ARC) socket & using another socket in both configurations of the direct connection to the sound system & the pass-through of the TV but that hasn't helped either. I may be wrong but I believe that the problem has something to do with the drivers, maybe I did something wrong in the initial install but I have even done several clean installs of the drivers in an attempt to fix the problem but with no success.
This shouldn't be such a problem but due to the digitization of Blu-Ray players, other media devices & in an attempt to make products user friendly & easier to set up with handshaking it has caused some compatibility headaches with certain products & PC (particularly Windows 7 PC's).

 

[ssddx]

what happens when you disconnect the tv from the home theater completely?

does the receiver show up then?

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have you already tried disabling ARC support in the tv menu?

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what are your thoughts on using optical output instead of hdmi provided we cannot get hdmi working? (provided your receiver supports optical??)

while not as good as hdmi... if you have DDL support on a soundcard you should get 5.1 just fine.

-

i'm not sure why the tv is showing up in your settings as it should not. your receiver should be showing up instead in that spot. the only way the television should show up like that is when you have your pc connected directly up to the tv which as you said you do not. (correct setup is pc->receiver->tv)

you say you have arc support... what happens when you hook up pc->tv.... can you use arc to transmit the data (may need to go through tv settings menu to enable)

we have a new samsung television hooked up to a receiver and a windows 7 laptop in the same configuration as my current system. that tv and receiver support arc and do not have this issue. my current system (which predates arc) also doesnt have this issue.

-

my guess is that somewhere along the line there is a setting on which should be off.

what are your receiver settings set to for the audio input you are using? are all features like arc and any other smart features turned off?

--

oh... and do make sure your home theater is set to auto-surround (or PCM/LPCM works as well). do not manually place it in a dolby mode or use any other fancy modes until we can get it working.

 

[Daniel Gall]

I had followed your suggestion & went with the optical cable running directly to the sound system from the sound card as I noticed this in the supported formats of both devices:




I seem to have made a little progress here & it sounds much better, despite the fact that the audio is only coming out of the sound system but that is not of really any major concern to me, but this has raised another question, now when I run the test on the DTS & Dolby Digital my system automatically detects it an has these lights come on:




Now the thing is that they come on during the test but that is the only time they come on. I tried my games, media player(I played with the options to have DD & DTS) & youtube but nothing happens.
Where am I going wrong here?
Am I missing certain software or settings?
Most importantly how can I get my games to work in 5.1? (Diablo 3 for example has a wide variety of audio output modes including DD but I'm still not getting it)

With the DDL support I have found that it is a licensing issue with realtek & while my particular model of sound card came out with DDL support the company no longer supports it for my sound card. I you know where to find the software (I can only find the Creative version) I greatly appreciate it.
Also when it comes to the audio connection options, I was taught in my time working at an electrical store that while HDMI audio is good Optical is much better provided that the cable, output & receiver on the products are of decent quality, I assume this rule still applies to PC but is does seem a little more complicated due to software, drivers, settings & other things.

 

[ssddx]

at least we have progress... that is better than nothing.

the DD light on your receiver will only show up when playing DD content. for example, watching a movie.

game audio is broadcast in PCM and optical does NOT support PCM at all since it is an uncompressed format. optical can only support uncompressed up to 2.1 channels and needs compressed after that. this is why DDL is so crucial as it converts PCM sound to DD on the fly.

perhaps you need to get a cheap soundcard with DDL support. onboard soundcards (ones on the motherboard) may not support this feature (its actually quite common that they do not). if you already have a soundcard.. i may have missed where you listed what model you have?

sorry but i need to disagree with you on optical. it only supports compressed surround so it is inferior to hdmi which supports uncompressed surround. it might potentially be better for 2.0/2.1 but we are not comparing that.

 

[Daniel Gall]

I think I may have resolved the issue. I got my hands on a copy of Dolby Home Theatre & my PC does seem to be working in 5.1 audio now, in some cases it definitely seems to be working in 5.1 & others it sounds like it is broadcasting the stereo through all the speakers but in all cases the audio in itself seems to have drastically improved but the game load times do appear to be much longer. The HDMI audio is still having problems but the optical is working perfectly now.
I am currently still playing with the software but I will give an update when I have properly worked all the configurations & settings out.

 

[Daniel Gall]

Sorry I have taken so long to finally respond on this thread. I ran Dolby Home Theatre on my PC & audio wise everything was good but eventually it started causing some problems with the performance & caused a lot of chaos in the games, sometimes leading to a complete crash of the system so in the end I took your advice & invested in a Creative Sound Blaster Z. I chose this particular card as I had no choice but to use the optical S/PDIF & DTS is the best way to do it as Dolby Digital is more for the connections like a HDMI but DTS doesn't necessarily need the compression over a TOSLINK connection due to the high bandwidth speed over a fibre optic connection & there isn't a large variety of sound cards available that suited my needs in this particular setup so it took me a while to track one down that was within my budget but in the end I am rather surprised at how well the audio sounds now that it is set up & configured properly, it has exceeded my expectations of how good the audio could sound. Thanks for the information you have provided as it did eventually put me on the right track to a solution.

 

[Ramesh Rajendran]

I too have similar issue. I have windows 8.1 lenovo laptop with nvidia GT 650 M graphics card, latest Sony TV and 2 year old Sony 5.1 home theatre. I have connected my laptop to the TV thru HDMI and TV to the 5.1 home theatre thru optical audio cable. I have gone thru all the settings inside the control panel to get the 5.1 audio output. When I click the rear speakers on the speaker configuration, only the front speakers plays the sound.

I have even tried the same in latest Macbook Pro with 5.1 setting and that also has same issue. But surprisingly the PS3 and TV set top box works great with 5.1 content.

My doubt is that though the laptops say that the audio format is 5.1, I do not think they really send 5.1 signal out of the HDMI. Or, it is a different format that the TV or the home theatre does not understand. Any way, the customer is the loser finally.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Ramesh

 

[Sudhirrssk]

I guess it's because the tv is configured to output stereo only..but if you connect your laptop to the receiver directly and route the video through HDMI from the receiver to tv you will be able to get all supported formats 5.1,7.1 etc.