HTPC and onboard sound

[Alamat]

Have had this HTPC for several years now and before I used to be able to pick out the "Speakers" as playback device. It now say unplugged for some reason and I am stuck on getting the receiver's which outputs MultiPCM at 7.1. Have an Asus Maximus V Gene MB with an i5 4690, using onboard audio and video. Currently on Win 10 now. I'd rather be able to get my mkvs to output DD or DTS like it used to. Any suggestions?

 

[Fallen Kell]

Really the best solution is to move towards a video card that has full HDMI capability (including audio). I havn't set this up in a while as I havn't changed my video card in my HTPC for 5-6 years. I'm using an old fanless (thus noiseless) Powercolor HD5850, which had built in HDMI 1.3 port. After installing the proper video and audio drivers, it supported Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD over HDMI. If you are attempting to play video games, you will need card support for DTS-Live! or similar.

If upgrading now, I wouldn't get a card that didn't support native HDMI 2.0 (preferrably 2.0a, even though 2.0b sounds newer, it is actually a lesser standard and allowed for certifying a device that can't actually output high quality 4k resolution as it cuts down the colorspace or frametimings).

 

[truckerCLOCK]

What are you using for playback? Plex? Emby? ...? It sounds like a driver issue. Did you have any recent updates?

 

[SMOGZINN]

Have had this HTPC for several years now and before I used to be able to pick out the "Speakers" as playback device. It now say unplugged for some reason and I am stuck on getting the receiver's which outputs MultiPCM at 7.1. Have an Asus Maximus V Gene MB with an i5 4690, using onboard audio and video. Currently on Win 10 now. I'd rather be able to get my mkvs to output DD or DTS like it used to. Any suggestions?

I would start by reinstalling the audio drivers for your motherboard.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Another option if the mobo soundcard is dead is a USB adaptor.

 

[Alamat]

I used to use Kodi (XMBC before) but now using just Vlan for the mkvs.
I have updated everything, realtek drivers and all. Realtek audio manager is not working that well though as I cannot even test the speakers. No sound comes out.
Haven't really upgraded anything.
If the mb sound is dead, won't I get any sound at all? I do get sound, defaults to multipcm but never getting the DTS or DD anymore like I used to.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yeah that makes sense. Its a software issue. If it was me I would try to play something real quick in Kodi because Kodi has dead simple passthrough settings (check the box). If that works then you can work backwards from there, if not the driver needs to be reinstalled.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I used to use Kodi (XMBC before) but now using just Vlan for the mkvs.
I have updated everything, realtek drivers and all. Realtek audio manager is not working that well though as I cannot even test the speakers. No sound comes out.
Haven't really upgraded anything.
If the mb sound is dead, won't I get any sound at all? I do get sound, defaults to multipcm but never getting the DTS or DD anymore like I used to.

New TV by any chance? I had a similar problem a while back and it turned out to be that the my Panasonic TV was sending a bad EDID configuration signal. I found this website helpful in troubleshooting the problem. For me in the end I had to modify my audio drivers to hard code what formats my receiver can handle.

 

[Alamat]

Update: So I stuck in there an old GTX 560TI. Got all the drivers up and going and still the same thing. Speakers are still "unplugged" and thus greyed out. The sound in MultiPCM 7.1 does sound a tad better with good discreet channels but no DTS or the like.

 

[piasabird]

Have you got something plugged in to the speakers jack, etc? Usually that would activate the item.

 

[Alamat]

Have you got something plugged in to the speakers jack, etc? Usually that would activate the item.

So I have to plug something in? I don't have anything plugged in at the moment.