5450 and 5.1 Sound

[adnank77]

I'm not sure this is the right place for this thread, but the 5450 is a video card afterall, even if my post is not about graphics ..

So I got H61 Motherboard for my HTPC build .. since the motherboard doesn't have HDMI output, I've got the 5450 Card ..

When I connect the HDMI to my Marantz Receiver, I don't get 5.1 .. Instead, Only stereo shows up ..

The onboard audio doesn't support digital sound output (there is 8 channel out but pure analog) ..

Am I doing something wrong or do I have to go for a basic sound card ??

 

[Red Hawk]

According to AMD's page for the 5450, the 5450 does in fact support up to 7.1 audio over HDMI. You may need to go into the PC's sound settings and make sure that it's set to 5.1. Right click the sound icon in the system tray, click "Playback devices", choose the playback device you are using and click "Configure". See if you can set it to 5.1.

 

[vshah]

what software are you using to play media? regular desktop sounds will only go over in stereo. if you play a file with 5.1 audio with a supported player (i use xbmc) you will get 5.1 audio over hdmi with the 5450. i used it for several years before upgrading to a fanless 6450.

 

[KingFatty]

What is the specific make and model number of your 5450? There is a possibility that the vendor has disabled various features of the GPU to save money, e.g., leaving out a circuit or chipset to cut cost. It's not impossible, and you'll see that with cutting various video ports etc., so maybe it happened here with the audio support.

 

[adnank77]

- I'm doing a backup of my DVD Library as ISO files then opening the ISO file using VLC Media Player. I'm under impression that ISO is everything including 5.1 sound (The size of the file indicates that).

- It's a Sapphire card .. I don't think they have multiple models, it's definitely low budget card ..

 

[ViRGE]

5450 definitely supports 5.1. It sounds like you just have a configuration problem in Windows. Go digging into the Windows sound control panel and see what comes up. There's an audio test in there that should make it clear whether you have 5.1 working or not.

 

[KingFatty]

Oh wait, if you are using VLC to try to get 5.1 audio, you have to specifically set the audio channel to make sure VLC is playing the digital audio thing. If not, I think it defaults to the analog stereo output?

I forget exactly the steps, but it's something like there is an audio option, then there will be a bunch of tabs, and you look around for selecting the channel or something, then I forget which but it wasn't intuitive, just try different selections and see if your receiver will light up with the DTS or Dolby Digital thing when you select the correct digital audio channel. This assumes you have set the computer also, to output audio through the soundcard. So before you worry about anything, I think you are OK and just have to configure all the settings to make sure VLC and the computer are sending the intended audio.

Give it a try and let us know if it worked, and if you can't we can run through VLC and let you know the specific step-by-step.