5.1 from PC to TV (SONOS System)

kinger8938 · 5 Nov 2019 at 15:36

Hi there

I'm planning on hooking my PC up to the TV to catch up with some PC games. As far as I know, my ancient onboard sound card doesn't support 5.1 at all.

What's the go to method to achieve 5.1 to my system? Can it be done through HDMI or is Optical tbe way to go?
Is it even a thing? Total novice tbh

b00merang69 · 5 Nov 2019 at 15:46

Most TV's only pass 2.0 PCM out via Optical and even if yours did pass 5.1 it would be not be able to do the newer DD-Plus and DTS-HD due to limit of bandwidth.

kinger8938 · 5 Nov 2019 at 15:53

b00merang69 said:
Most TV's only pass 2.0 PCM out via Optical and even if yours did pass 5.1 it would be not be able to do the newer DD-Plus and DTS-HD due to limit of bandwidth.

Thanks for the reply..

I don't understand what this means?

sorry! Again appreciate any advice.

I think I'm running optical from the soundbar to the TV, then all my devices go to the tv over HDMI. (Not directly to the TV, to Samsung's crappy One connect box.)

It seems to work for the PS4 via this method, but I'm assuming it won't for PC? Or at least not with my current setup

b00merang69 · 5 Nov 2019 at 15:57

A lot of new Movies and TV shows use the newer above mentioned Dolby and DTS so you will miss out as the device will not encode them via optical stick to HDMI (assuming its new enough to support these).

kinger8938 · 5 Nov 2019 at 16:01

b00merang69 said:
A lot of new Movies and TV shows use the newer mentioned Dolby and DTS above so you will miss out as the device will not encode them via optical stick to HDMI (assuming its new enough to support these).

Ahh ok.

So if I go with HDMI from my soundbar to my GTX1070, will I achieve 5.1? I'm not sure what type of 5.1 I'm after, just the basic one (excuse my ignorance, I honestly get a bit lost in the world of audio)

In terms of equipment, it's a SONOS Beam with HDMI ARC (couldnt get this to play with my TV so I had to go optical even though the TV supports HDMI ARC). Samsung KS7000, And as above a 1070 video card.

b00merang69 · 5 Nov 2019 at 16:03

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2796/~/which-hdmi-audio-formats-do-nvidia-gpus-support?

Grim5 · 6 Nov 2019 at 01:38

I have a Sonos playbar 5.1 setup - it took a while to figure it out as there isnt much help on the interwebs.

You need a soundcard for your PC that can encode Dolby Digital 5.1 on the fly. Most Creative branded soundcards can do it, I use this one as it was the cheapest I could find: https://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-omni-surround-5-1

Once you have the soundcard, you need to run an Optical cable from the soundcard into the Sonos playbar/beam.

Lastly enable Dolby Digital in the soundcard's software and boom it's done - you'll have 5.1 surround sound which you can also confirm using the phone app - in the Sonos phone app you can see what the input sound is - it should say "Dolby Digital 5.1"

You can then still run HDMI from the beam to the TV and use that for non PC sound. You will not be able to run everything through the TV I'm afraid - too many issues like your graphics card will not send Dolby Digital 5.1 over HDMI, it will just send multi channel uncompressed audio or 2 channel audio (because the Graphics card doesn't know about your soundbar, it will only see your 2 chanel TV and send audio for that) and your TV won't do audio encoding and will pass through whatever it gets - so your Sonos soundbar will just play two channel audio.

If there is a way to get Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC3) from a PC into your Sonos beam without using a soundcard and optical cable I'm all ears - but after a whole week of research it was the only solution I could find for Sonos products.

b00merang69 · 6 Nov 2019 at 01:48

I assume this mean the Sonas cannot do the newer Dolby Plus or DTS HD format as your going to get the SoundCard to recode them?

I have tested this on my ZxR as my Logitech Z906 also do not support the newer Dolby DTS formats as optical only (no HDMI) and at least I get 5.1.

Grim5 · 6 Nov 2019 at 01:54

The only surround sound format that Sonos products support is Dolby Digital 5.1 format, it's also known as AC3. For two channel, Sonos supports Two channel stereo.

b00merang69 · 6 Nov 2019 at 02:05

Ok so no Dolby Digital Plus (also known as Enhanced AC-3 and commonly abbreviated as DD+ or E-AC-3, or EC-3) supports up to 8 channels (7.1)

Grim5 · 6 Nov 2019 at 02:20

Yeah it can't do any of those - Sonos can only do what fits over an Optical cable. Even though the Beam was given HDMI they didn't update the codecs and it's still limited to the save optical cable codecs that the Playbar launched with.

kinger8938 · 11 Nov 2019 at 10:16

Grim5 said:
Yeah it can't do any of those - Sonos can only do what fits over an Optical cable. Even though the Beam was given HDMI they didn't update the codecs and it's still limited to the save optical cable codecs that the Playbar launched with.

Thanks for the input guys

I set up my PC to the TV this week and as suggested, it only picks up 2.0 stereo via HDMI through my video card.

The Beam only offers 1 connection, and that is via HDMI (With or without ARC). However it does come with a HDMI to Optical Converter attachment that I am currently using as ARC just wouldn't work on my TV so some random reason.

So I guess I need a sound card similar to the one suggested, then just swap the optical from my TV to the PC when I want to use it? Or is there such thing as a splitter that won't impact the format etc?

Sound cards seem a bit pricier than I was expecting too. Need to weigh up if it's worth it

Grim5 · 11 Nov 2019 at 20:36

The alternative is to just run audio through the GPU. If you do have the 5.1 setup, then the Sonos beam will attempt to do it's own pseudo surround sound output where it plays ambient sounds through the rears (like music/birds tweeting etc) - but it's not real surround sound because it's trying to convert 2.1 into 5.1. It's better than nothing though.

kinger8938 · 18 Nov 2019 at 12:32

Grim5 said:
The alternative is to just run audio through the GPU. If you do have the 5.1 setup, then the Sonos beam will attempt to do it's own pseudo surround sound output where it plays ambient sounds through the rears (like music/birds tweeting etc) - but it's not real surround sound because it's trying to convert 2.1 into 5.1. It's better than nothing though.

Thanks. I've noticed some music sounds etc still play out the rears as standard but would like to get it working properly.

May need to grab a cheap internal sound card. The external one above looks suitable but more cables etc behind the TV.

Radox-0 · 18 Nov 2019 at 14:03

One method you can use is a HDMI to your TV, then another separate HDMI cable into your SONAS System directly. I do this for my PC, one cable to Monitor and another seperate one to my AV system to enable all the format options.

When you connect a HDMI cable from your GPU into your SONOS system, you will get full ability to select 5.1 etc and all that. In sound menu the SONOS system if it behaves anything like my systems will appear as a selectable sound source in its own right. Hopefully below sort of shows what I mean:

There is a slight downside, the SONOS system will appear as a second monitor. Not a massive issue per say and does not impact performance in my experience, but does work.

kinger8938 · 18 Nov 2019 at 15:10

Radox-0 said:
One method you can use is a HDMI to your TV, then another separate HDMI cable into your SONAS System directly. I do this for my PC, one cable to Monitor and another seperate one to my AV system to enable all the format options.

When you connect a HDMI cable from your GPU into your SONOS system, you will get full ability to select 5.1 etc and all that. In sound menu the SONOS system if it behaves anything like my systems will appear as a selectable sound source in its own right. Hopefully below sort of shows what I mean:

There is a slight downside, the SONOS system will appear as a second monitor. Not a massive issue per say and does not impact performance in my experience, but does work.

That's interesting, thanks!

Only issue I would have there is that I'm pretty sure my 1070 only has one HDMI port and all the others are DP? (Need hdmi to my TV too)

Radox-0 · 18 Nov 2019 at 15:14

kinger8938 said:
That's interesting, thanks!

Only issue I would have there is that I'm pretty sure my 1070 only has one HDMI port and all the others are DP? (Need hdmi to my TV too)

Ahh yeah, if it is the FTW GTX 1070, then yes it only has a single HDMI and rest are DP. Amusingly another thread in somewhat similar boat: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/lg-oled-c9-pc-audio-via-arc-not-earc-stereo-only.18870473/ trying to work out if it would work with Audio going via DP to HDMI adaptor, but not 100% sure myself in that regards.

kinger8938 · 18 Nov 2019 at 15:16

Radox-0 said:
Ahh yeah, if it is the FTW GTX 1070, then yes it only has a single HDMI and rest are DP. Amusingly another thread in somewhat similar boat: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/lg-oled-c9-pc-audio-via-arc-not-earc-stereo-only.18870473/ trying to work out if it would work with Audio going via DP to HDMI adaptor, but not 100% sure myself in that regards.

Ah yes that would be the next issue. Either then use an adapter for the display or the audio.

Would an adapter carry HDR/4K etc. Just leads to even more questions

Grim5 · 18 Nov 2019 at 19:38

Radox-0 said:
One method you can use is a HDMI to your TV, then another separate HDMI cable into your SONAS System directly. I do this for my PC, one cable to Monitor and another seperate one to my AV system to enable all the format options.

When you connect a HDMI cable from your GPU into your SONOS system, you will get full ability to select 5.1 etc and all that. In sound menu the SONOS system if it behaves anything like my systems will appear as a selectable sound source in its own right. Hopefully below sort of shows what I mean:

There is a slight downside, the SONOS system will appear as a second monitor. Not a massive issue per say and does not impact performance in my experience, but does work.

That won't work on Sonos sorry.

That 5.1 Option you see in Windows is Uncompressed. As such the Sonos product will play it as Stereo.

Sonos only accepts an Pre Encoded Dolby Digital signal for 5.1 surround sound. And Windows doesn't encode sound output into Dolby formats, because they would have to pay a very expensive license to Dolby to have this feature.

This works for you because your receiver is capable of playing uncompressed multi-channel audio, Sonos products cannot do this.

@OP: If this is all starting to sound very complicated that's because it is. You may even wish to get rid of the Sonos product and buy another branded soundbard - one that can play multichannel uncompressed audio.

kinger8938 · 19 Nov 2019 at 08:26

Grim5 said:
That won't work on Sonos sorry.

That 5.1 Option you see in Windows is Uncompressed. As such the Sonos product will play it as Stereo.

Sonos only accepts an Pre Encoded Dolby Digital signal for 5.1 surround sound. And Windows doesn't encode sound output into Dolby formats, because they would have to pay a very expensive license to Dolby to have this feature.

This works for you because your receiver is capable of playing uncompressed multi-channel audio, Sonos products cannot do this.

@OP: If this is all starting to sound very complicated that's because it is. You may even wish to get rid of the Sonos product and buy another branded soundbard - one that can play multichannel uncompressed audio.

its definitely more complicated than it needs to be

I always find that with audio, from an outsiders point if view.

If it's to the point of considering changing my entire set up then I'll have to skip and make do with stereo for PC gaming, as it works really well across all my other devices

Maybe I'll try optical via a dedicated sound card and see what happens?