HTPC with ATI HD 5970 - Can only hear in stereo!

[nidalm]

Hi All,

I recently bought myself an ATI HD 5970 with the dream of using the HDMI output to watch movies and perhaps even game over my home theater system. The setup is simply connecting the gfx card via ATI's DVI->HDMI adapter to my Yamaha amp's (Which supports both DTS and Dolby) HDMI input. The Amp is connected to my projector and the 5.1 speakers. Set everything up last night after muddling around with ATI and Realtek drivers. The amp is detecting 5 channel input and my Realtek control panel can play the test sounds on each speaker. yay!

Problem is, when I played anything other than test sounds, the audio coming out was stereo, not 5.1 which I needed. I installed ac3filter and am now able to get surround sound when watching movies on MPC, but windows sounds as well as gaming are still in stereo.

I'm new to audio on PCs, but I hear this may have something to do with PC sounds being 'bitstreamed' as DTS over the HDMI. What I don't understand is why my amp cannot decode this as it is supposed to be able to.

As a test, I connected the HDMI output of one of my friend's laptops (Asus, core i5) to the amp and the audio from there worked perfectly without any special settings needed.

Would greatly appreciate help on my problem or perhaps pointing me in the right direction with what this bitstreaming is.

If it helps, my setup is:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz Q6600 (Kentsfield)
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35-D3SR (With built in Realtek sound card)
Graphics: Sapphire HD 5970 /w ATI DVI to HDMI adapter.
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Drivers:

• ATI Catalyst 11.2
• Realtek ATI HDMI Audio Device Driver v R2.55

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

 

[simonizor]

If you haven't done this already, right click on the speaker in your system tray and select playback devices. Select your HDMI sound and hit the configure button in the lower left corner. Select 5.1 in the window that pops up and apply.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

you seem to be getting 5.1 (6) channels decoded at the receiver, but 4 channels have no data. i'm not familiar with audio over hdmi, but i think that's the hard part and it sounds like you're already successful. what material are you listening to? stereo audio will remain stereo unless dolby pro logic or dts neo:6 processing is being done somewhere. these will synthesize 5.1 channels based on the left and right, but the effect is kind of blah. music is definitely better without it, in my opinion.

before making any more changes, i would play something known to have a 5.1 audio track, either a dvd or a video file. you can check a video file with mediainfo:
http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

i've had good luck with initial setup by using vlc at default settings for playback until everything else is set up, then setting up mpc on a system i know works properly. actually, i've dumped mpc due to crashing and just use vlc now.

for games, either dolby digital live or dts interactive are what you need your soundcard to do. if it isn't supported on your soundcard, there's no way to add it. these will take the game audio and encode it into 5.1 real channels for your receiver to play. i've been using them for years and they are excellent.

for my system, i'm using dts interactive > s/pdif > receiver - dts mode. without changing anything, stereo sound remains stereo, 5.1 is 5.1 and games are 5.1 encoded. i'm using dts now as my new receiver seems to misbehave a bit with DD. i have no preference between the 2 formats - they both work great.

1 thing i suggest avoiding is having your receiver constantly switching modes when you stop and start playback - you can get loud pops, and i think it broke my last receiver's digital inputs.

good luck!

 

[nidalm]

@simonizor

Yep, that's all done. All 4 speakers and subwoofer work fine when I hit the test button and also when I'm playing movies or listening to music with ac3filter.

I suspect this may have something to do with the format the audio is when it's sent out via the HDMI. ac3filter formats it correctly perhaps?

@The Boston Dangler

As I understand it, ATI's cards simply pass audio (encoding and all) from the application playing it directly into the cable. If the signal is not decodable by the receiver, it'll just play 2 channels (shooting in the dark here!!).

I'm playing .mkv files, which I'm relatively certain have at least 5.1 surround, but I will confirm in a couple of hours when I get back on my HTPC with the software you linked me (thanks!).

One possibility is that my receiver may not support DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD (only the older versions of both). Would this be a problem?

 

[Fox5]

Do the files have Dolby Digital sound tracks? Because if not, you'll only get stereo. Also, you need to make sure the software (both codecs and player) are set to do passthrough, not 5.1 decoding.

The number of stuff on the PC that doesn't have a dolby digital track (almost all games), is why I went with an amp with analog input and 6 channel analog out.

 

[Nebor]

Fox5 nailed it. Most games don't have DD encoding. So unless you run analog lines, you don't get to game in surround sound.

 

[nidalm]

I see. Any means of encoding on the PC it that won't break the bank?

 

[the DRIZZLE]

I only use my HTPC for movies not gaming so I'm no expert but have you checked the audio settings in the game? I'm pretty sure windows sounds are just 2 channel so unless you have the receiver do something else with them all you'll get is 2 channel.

 

[Fox5]

I see. Any means of encoding on the PC it that won't break the bank?

There are cards with Dolby Digital and DTS encoding. I believe DTS is higher quality, but have no personal experience with the real-time versions of either, they are lower quality than the pre-baked versions on movies.
Some of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi cards can do both. For a gamer, I'd recommend them anyway, there's still a fair amount of games that rely on Creative's proprietary APIs for the best surround sound (say....almost all Electronic Arts games), plus they have sound scape expansion software with some of their cards which will take stereo sound and create surround sound out of it. This is more in line with the Dolby Pro Logic technology, since there is some 'surround soundness' that can be had out of a stereo channel.

Other options are Asus's cards and Auzentech, I believe Auzentech even has a card that can take in video input and mix it into HDMI so that you can have everything on a single HDMI cable and support the higher quality audio options only available over HDMI. (Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD, this card also has a Creative processor on it to do all the in game sound effects, pricey though)

 

[the DRIZZLE]

There are cards with Dolby Digital and DTS encoding. I believe DTS is higher quality, but have no personal experience with the real-time versions of either, they are lower quality than the pre-baked versions on movies.
Some of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi cards can do both. For a gamer, I'd recommend them anyway, there's still a fair amount of games that rely on Creative's proprietary APIs for the best surround sound (say....almost all Electronic Arts games), plus they have sound scape expansion software with some of their cards which will take stereo sound and create surround sound out of it. This is more in line with the Dolby Pro Logic technology, since there is some 'surround soundness' that can be had out of a stereo channel.

Other options are Asus's cards and Auzentech, I believe Auzentech even has a card that can take in video input and mix it into HDMI so that you can have everything on a single HDMI cable and support the higher quality audio options only available over HDMI. (Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD, this card also has a Creative processor on it to do all the in game sound effects, pricey though)

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think he needs these cards to get multichannel sounds from games. His video card should be able to output the sounds as PCM over HDMI.

 

[Nebor]

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think he needs these cards to get multichannel sounds from games. His video card should be able to output the sounds as PCM over HDMI.

PCM 2.1 channel IIRC.

Also I don't know which X-fi cards do real time encoding....

 

[nidalm]

There are cards with Dolby Digital and DTS encoding. I believe DTS is higher quality, but have no personal experience with the real-time versions of either, they are lower quality than the pre-baked versions on movies.
Some of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi cards can do both. For a gamer, I'd recommend them anyway, there's still a fair amount of games that rely on Creative's proprietary APIs for the best surround sound (say....almost all Electronic Arts games), plus they have sound scape expansion software with some of their cards which will take stereo sound and create surround sound out of it. This is more in line with the Dolby Pro Logic technology, since there is some 'surround soundness' that can be had out of a stereo channel.

Other options are Asus's cards and Auzentech, I believe Auzentech even has a card that can take in video input and mix it into HDMI so that you can have everything on a single HDMI cable and support the higher quality audio options only available over HDMI. (Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD, this card also has a Creative processor on it to do all the in game sound effects, pricey though)

PCM 2.1 channel IIRC.

Also I don't know which X-fi cards do real time encoding....

Hopefully ATI can include a decoder/DD encoder in its future lines of cards. With HDMI, it really has become both an Audio+Video game now.

Thanks a lot for the info guys. I think the best solution for me for now would be to run an S/PDIF cable from my motherboard to the amp and simply use that audio channel when gaming or running applications without DD/DTS support!

 

[nidalm]

Out of curiosity, why do I need to run ac3filter for surround to work right now?

 

[Slick5150]

Hopefully ATI can include a decoder/DD encoder in its future lines of cards. With HDMI, it really has become both an Audio+Video game now.

Thanks a lot for the info guys. I think the best solution for me for now would be to run an S/PDIF cable from my motherboard to the amp and simply use that audio channel when gaming or running applications without DD/DTS support!

You'll still only get stereo sound in games doing that. You need something with a DD/DTS encoder to get surround sound over digital (whether that's HDMI or S/PDIF). There are a number of sound cards nowadays that have that ability (the Asus Xonar line for example)

 

[Fox5]

Hopefully ATI can include a decoder/DD encoder in its future lines of cards. With HDMI, it really has become both an Audio+Video game now.

Thanks a lot for the info guys. I think the best solution for me for now would be to run an S/PDIF cable from my motherboard to the amp and simply use that audio channel when gaming or running applications without DD/DTS support!

Sound cards with that capability are roughly $50, and they'll give higher sound quality than you're getting with onboard anyway. Or at least, the Creative cards have extra sound effects in some games and software to add surround sound to any stereo signal.

BTW, switching your receiver to Pro Logic MAY give you some limited surround sound effects, I'm not sure if the technology requires explicit support or not.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

your best bet is an asus sound card. they are based on the excellent c-media chips, come in pci and pci-e, and support either dd or dts. they start around $75.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

A question - Why are you using Realtek's HDMI driver instead of the AMD HDMI driver included in 11.2?

 

[simonizor]

Fox5 nailed it. Most games don't have DD encoding. So unless you run analog lines, you don't get to game in surround sound.

All of my games that say that they offer 5.1 surround work fine through my HDMI cable. The rest of the audio that the OP is trying to listen to doesn't have surround sound.

 

[Fox5]

All of my games that say that they offer 5.1 surround work fine through my HDMI cable. The rest of the audio that the OP is trying to listen to doesn't have surround sound.

Do you have a motherboard or sound card the supports DD Live? Some of the realtek stuff does support it. I just don't see any other way to get 5.1 digital surround sound, except if the game or OS can encode dolby digital, or you're using pro logic.

Well, I suppose 6 channel uncompressed sound would work too, but not many receivers or video cards support that.

 

[nidalm]

A question - Why are you using Realtek's HDMI driver instead of the AMD HDMI driver included in 11.2?

The ATI drivers weren't behaving properly. They worked fine in stereo, but whenever I tried turning them into 5.1 in the control panel, it would tell me there was some error doing it. I gave up and switched to Realtek.

Sound cards with that capability are roughly $50, and they'll give higher sound quality than you're getting with onboard anyway. Or at least, the Creative cards have extra sound effects in some games and software to add surround sound to any stereo signal.

BTW, switching your receiver to Pro Logic MAY give you some limited surround sound effects, I'm not sure if the technology requires explicit support or not.

Looks like there's no way around that new sound card. I guess I wouldn't mind swinging an extra $100 or so. I'd love a suggestion or two to a specific card.

Ideally I would like to pick up one of those that mixes the audio into the HDMI to minimize cabling that was mentioned up there. I honestly don't know where to begin with sound cards!

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

The ATI drivers weren't behaving properly. They worked fine in stereo, but whenever I tried turning them into 5.1 in the control panel, it would tell me there was some error doing it. I gave up and switched to Realtek.

I do a mix and match with the HDMI driver from 10.10 and the rest from 11.2. Install the 10.10 drivers, then follow up with a custom install of 11.2 with the HDMI driver deselected. Others over at AVS Forum swear by a mix of 10.7 with later video driver versions. AMD drivers can be a bit wonky so it takes some messing around to find out what works for your system.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

Do you have a motherboard or sound card the supports DD Live? Some of the realtek stuff does support it. I just don't see any other way to get 5.1 digital surround sound, except if the game or OS can encode dolby digital, or you're using pro logic.

Well, I suppose 6 channel uncompressed sound would work too, but not many receivers or video cards support that.

I don't think this is correct. Most newer receivers and video cards do support it. I agree with simonizor that the games just don't have surround. I don't think the op has a hardware problem. Op when you go into the control panel and play the test sounds what time of input is the receiver indicating?

 

[simonizor]

Do you have a motherboard or sound card the supports DD Live? Some of the realtek stuff does support it. I just don't see any other way to get 5.1 digital surround sound, except if the game or OS can encode dolby digital, or you're using pro logic.

Well, I suppose 6 channel uncompressed sound would work too, but not many receivers or video cards support that.

I never really looked into how it works; it just does. I don't have anything special for a mobo.. just an Asus P5Q PRO and no dedicated sound card. I believe that my surround sound receiver goes into PCM mode when I play 5.1 audio from my PC.

@TastesLikeChicken, I also have the Realtek ATI HDMI driver because I couldn't get the one that came with the ATI drivers to work correctly. The Realtek one works great for me. I think that I found it in a suggestion on AMD's forums a while back when I was looking into why I could only select stereo in the playback devices configuration.

 

[Nebor]

I never really looked into how it works; it just does. I don't have anything special for a mobo.. just an Asus P5Q PRO and no dedicated sound card. I believe that my surround sound receiver goes into PCM mode when I play 5.1 audio from my PC.

@TastesLikeChicken, I also have the Realtek ATI HDMI driver because I couldn't get the one that came with the ATI drivers to work correctly. The Realtek one works great for me. I think that I found it in a suggestion on AMD's forums a while back when I was looking into why I could only select stereo in the playback devices configuration.

Most games do not have 5.1 digital surround built in. It's rare. So you can only get surround via analog output, unless you can encode those 6 channels of analog into DD\DTS in real time.

I'd say it's more likely that you have some sort of virtualization enabled and are confusing that with actual surround sound.

 

[simonizor]

Most games do not have 5.1 digital surround built in. It's rare. So you can only get surround via analog output, unless you can encode those 6 channels of analog into DD\DTS in real time.

I'd say it's more likely that you have some sort of virtualization enabled and are confusing that with actual surround sound.

Negative. It's actual surround sound; please don't assume that I'm an idiot.