HDMI audio from video card? Sound Blaster X-Fi

[MerrickAggie97]

Ok,

Im a little confused. I have a Geforce GTX 460 in SLI and the box says that it can bitstream audio using the HDMI output.

My question is will this bitstream all of the sound to my receiver? Right now I have my computer hooked up to my receiver using a DVI to HDMI port while running an optical cable from Sound Blaster X-fi extreme to get audio since when I do gaming I like to play on my big 40' samsung LED.

I would like to know if I can ditch the optical cable and just run all my sound completely through an HDMI cable?

Im sure my question is confusing, but I hope someone can answer.

Thanks.

 

[Campy]

If that's what it says it'll do then i guess it will. As far as i can tell it should definitely work. I'm unsure whether it supports Dolby TrueHD sound and that lot though, if you plan on using the setup for watching high quality bluray encodes etc.
The easiest way of finding out whether the sound works is to try.

 

[MerrickAggie97]

If that's what it says it'll do then i guess it will. As far as i can tell it should definitely work. I'm unsure whether it supports Dolby TrueHD sound and that lot though, if you plan on using the setup for watching high quality bluray encodes etc.
The easiest way of finding out whether the sound works is to try.

Thats the thing. There aren't really any instructions that explain how it works. I wasn't under the impression that you could get audio out of DVI to HDMI.

 

[wlee15]

Does your receiver support HDMI audio input (some receivers only support HDMI pass through). If this is true than yes you can remove the optical cable. If you don't need any of the analog outputs than you don't need the Sound Blaster anymore.

 

[MerrickAggie97]

Does your receiver support HDMI audio input (some receivers only support HDMI pass through). If this is true than yes you can remove the optical cable. If you don't need any of the analog outputs than you don't need the Sound Blaster anymore.

My receiver is one of the best in business. Pioneer VSX-1020 It fully supports HDMI audio and can even pass a 3D signal through it.

I get full lossless audio when watching bluray.

 

[Wag]

Yes, the 460 will eventually support bitstreaming (Dolby TrueHD/ DTS-HD MA) but the drivers aren't ready yet. Supposedly the drivers will be out Sept at the earliest. You should be able to output PCM audio over the HDMI right now though. Download the latest beta driver set and you should be good.

 

[MerrickAggie97]

Yes, the 460 will eventually support bitstreaming (Dolby TrueHD/ DTS-HD MA) but the drivers aren't ready yet. Supposedly the drivers will be out Sept at the earliest. You should be able to output PCM audio over the HDMI right now though. Download the latest beta driver set and you should be good.

Will it have all the benefits that is provided by My Sound Blaster?

Will it work for gaming or just movies?

 

[ModestGamer]

Will it have all the benefits that is provided by My Sound Blaster?

Will it work for gaming or just movies?

sound blaster render to analog "unless something changed and you have a high end optical card". HDMI audio "shouldn't really require much decoding encoding aside from decryption". It is simply passing along data.

 

[Wag]

Well that depends on how you use your setup. It should be able to output all audio and support multichannel output and all the latest codecs, etc (I have no idea if it supports OpenAL, but it should). If you plan on using it for gaming, it should work just fine. But I don't have one so I couldn't say (I actually have a standalone HDMI audiocard, I assume the GTX 460 should work simillarly). Once the driver update arrives you will be able to bitstream too.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1262246

Update: According to someone in that thread, they got their 460 bitstreaming using FFDShow, so apparently it does work with the latest driver set.

 

[MerrickAggie97]

Sounds more complicated than I expected. I'll look into it when the drivers are ready.

 

[ModestGamer]

Sounds more complicated than I expected. I'll look into it when the drivers are ready.

I use my optical ADAT output on my machine. I find that my card gets a bit slow when I run the audio on it. So I disabled it in the properties manager and got a little performance bump. I also have several Maudio delta 1010's I use for recording.

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