Tell me about HTPC and Audio please....

Clipsey

Clipsey

Clipsey

Soldato
Joined
26 Nov 2004
Posts
6,167
Location
Near Windy City, USA
Fellas,

Built a HTPC (with Blu-Ray) connecting to a big screen. Just bought an Onkyo TX-SR607 and some decent speakers with Sub.
Right now here is where I am confused on what to do about Audio - at the moment (as of last night connecting it up) I just ran Video & Audio through Mobo straight to the Onkyo and then up to the Tv.
I don't think the onboard Sound Card is that great or outputs what it needs to do?
Should I buy a Sound Card that has Optical output and run that to the Onkyo?

I'm just confused, as I thought that the Onkyo would process the sound it received from the PC and then send it to the speakers in glorious 5.1 or 7.1 sound?

Any help would be much appreciated :)
 
you have to tell any software decoders (eg ffdshow,ac3) to output spdif as is.

If the onboard sound has spdif output (eg optical) it'll be the exact same quality as any other soundcard you buy.
 
Oxy said:
what motherboard do you have? If you have 7.1 LCPM over HDMI you should be fine!
Click to expand...

It's a Foxconn 780G - states that it has 8 ports and 7.1 HD audio??

So should I be running the sound via the coloured ports at the back rather than over the HDMI cable? Just have no idea on why it is so quiet?
 
Does your amp have any HDMI inputs?

I'm running an A-Bit 780G mobo and just run my HDMI cable straight into my amp, then using another HDMI cable coming out of the HDMI output on amp stick that into the back of the TV.

The amp will process the sound and pass the picture through to the TV.
 
ManCuBuS said:
Does your amp have any HDMI inputs?

I'm running an A-Bit 780G mobo and just run my HDMI cable straight into my amp, then using another HDMI cable coming out of the HDMI output on amp stick that into the back of the TV.

The amp will process the sound and pass the picture through to the TV.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I am doing right now. However, the sound is not 5.1 (i.e. in movies, voices coming out of all speakers rather than just the center?).
Not sure if it's an Amp related problem or the PC itself.
 
Then its either your amp not decoding the audio properly (a menu setting perhaps) or the HTPC not passing the sound to the amp in the correct format.

I'm doing exactly this also and get 7.1 with no problems. I'm using a Pioneer amp though so I dunno how your Onkyo needs to be set-up.

Any chance you could get some screen dumps of your audio settings fella (in windows) and I'll compare them to mine and we'll take it from there..
 
I'm fairly certain it's a PC output problem as the Onkyo is the new one of this year, so would have thought it would have no problem decoding stuff.
Now here is the problem, the Mobo uses Realtek audio settings (whatever that is?) and I can't really seem to figure it all out. If I plug in a jack at the line out it detects it all ok - but the 'digital' option never shows up when using HDMI. Think I'm gonna have to really look in to it more.
Where or what settings do you use?
 
If thats true you'll have to either make do with 5.1 using an optical/coaxial connector assuming you have either of those.
Or use analgoue outputs from the sound card if its 7.1 you want. Thats 4x 3.5mm to phono cables. But in this case the PC will be processing the audio not the Onkyo.

edit- reading that link they says it can do DTS over HDMI. it won't be LCPM but it'll be surround over hdmi.
 
Last edited:
So the 780G can't do 5.1 or 7.1 straight over HDMI. So can I simply get a sound card that handles 7.1 output (only really need 5.1 tbh) and hook it up via a digital cable (optical for instance) ?
Any recommendations on sound cards?
 
im pretty sure that motherboard has spdif pins on the board so you need to either get a spdif header which will give you optical out which you can use to get 5.1 (but you wont get HD formats this way) or you can buy a new soundcard which can output 5.1 via HDMI (which CAN support the HD formats)

IF you are feeling like a quick and dirty ghetto solution then you could wire the spdif header pins up to an RCA cable and stick that in the coax input on the amp.
 
Think it'll be just as easy for me to whack in a new sound card - as I have no idea what the other part of what you said :p
 
Having done some back to back tests on my setup, I found using the analog audio outputs on the PC into my Receiver (Denon 3802) sounded much better then 5.1 over SPDIF which is very much bitrate limited and doesn't do many Blu-ray HD Audio films much justice...

If your amp has the ability to take 5.1/7.1 via analogue inputs, I'd at least give it a go...
 
I'll give that a try Demon.
Was messing about with it yesterday and got it all to work ok over the HDMI cable in the end. All sounded pretty awesome (movies etc) but being a complete noob here, what do I want the amp to tell me - DTS, HD Audio or whatever?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom