Any way to pass 5.1 via Nvidia HDMI?

Bill Turnip · 9 Jan 2022 at 10:30

It's my understanding that whilst the gpu SUPPORTS that format, it does not PRODUCE it. It will only pass what is generated. That's why it is important to know the format of sound being produced. As @EsaT says, pc games do not natively produce dolby digital (for sonos compatability), only pcm. This pcm will be sent by the gpu, but is not usable by the sonos. You will need a sound card or hacked inboard drivers to get the output of dolby digital. However, I think you need to connect from this sound card to the speakers, which is an additional cable.

kinger8938 · 9 Jan 2022 at 11:27

Bill Turnip said:
It's my understanding that whilst the gpu SUPPORTS that format, it does not PRODUCE it. It will only pass what is generated. That's why it is important to know the format of sound being produced. As @EsaT says, pc games do not natively produce dolby digital (for sonos compatability), only pcm. This pcm will be sent by the gpu, but is not usable by the sonos. You will need a sound card or hacked inboard drivers to get the output of dolby digital. However, I think you need to connect from this sound card to the speakers, which is an additional cable.

Yep this lines up with how I had it set up before with he optical switch etc, thanks for clearing up the Dolby/PCM stuff I must say I'm not clued up on it all

The_Arbiter · 9 Jan 2022 at 20:08

Not sure i get the issue still

Did you manage to change anything on the PC?

Bill Turnip · 9 Jan 2022 at 21:20

Think the crux is that the pc is not generating a dolby digital signal, only a pcm. Issue is his sonos beam only accepts stereo pcm as a signal, not surround pcm. Therefore, surround via a single hdmi won't work with his current setup with a sonos unit receiving.

james.miller · 10 Jan 2022 at 07:35

kinger8938 said:
Tbh yeah it's a pain, HDMI CAN indeed sent the signal but pretty sure as it's coming from Nvidias GPU, it won't touch any thing Dolby thus just sents 2.0 stereo pcm

I don't know who told you that but they are wrong. Any nvidia card form a 600 series upward will bitstream hd audio formats, including atmos, just fine. If your card isnt outputting the correct format, you have a software issue somewhere. If it's not reporting that the connected hardware supports the right format, it's probably that connected hardware that's the problem.

kinger8938 said:
I just assumed Dolby 5.1 is what I was after for games etc.

The best way is LPCM for gaming and bitstream for everything else. But, the use of ARC makes that all very complicated and messy. It would seem that's the beam is the limitation here as it doesnt seem to support LPCM at all which is lunacy, frankly. Because of that, you need a surround encoder to get surround sound from games (95% of them, anyway, a rare few have encoders built in) and nVidia don't include on in the drivers, neither does AMD for that matter as everything with an HDMI port should support lpcm. Even the HDMI 1.0 spec release 19 YEARS AGO supported 7.1 LPCM. This seems like a case of sonos being sonos. Certainly not something nVidia are doing wrong.

Purgatory · 10 Jan 2022 at 11:19

james.miller said:
I don't know who told you that but they are wrong. Any nvidia card form a 600 series upward will bitstream hd audio formats, including atmos, just fine. If your card isnt outputting the correct format, you have a software issue somewhere. If it's not reporting that the connected hardware supports the right format, it's probably that connected hardware that's the problem.

The best way is LPCM for gaming and bitstream for everything else. But, the use of ARC makes that all very complicated and messy. It would seem that's the beam is the limitation here as it doesnt seem to support LPCM at all which is lunacy, frankly. Because of that, you need a surround encoder to get surround sound from games (95% of them, anyway, a rare few have encoders built in) and nVidia don't include on in the drivers, neither does AMD for that matter as everything with an HDMI port should support lpcm. Even the HDMI 1.0 spec release 19 YEARS AGO supported 7.1 LPCM. This seems like a case of sonos being sonos. Certainly not something nVidia are doing wrong.

This ...^ It's your sonos device that is messing things up.

kinger8938 · 10 Jan 2022 at 16:45

I'm lost as to why it worked via the optical to hdmi adapter though?

Actually no I guess that worked because the external soundcard put it through as Dolby, a format which Sonos accepted.

I was hoping for a simple fix but I think that fix is to just return it to optical with the splitter etc

james.miller · 10 Jan 2022 at 18:04

spdif support 2 channel uncompressed PCM, or Dolby Digital / DTS. It doesnt have the bandwidth to support multi channel PCM so for anything that doesnt encode it's own audio using DD:Live or DTS:interactive, the soundcard needed to have those encoders in it's drivers in order squeeze multi channel audio through the spdif port. Your soundcard did this. HDMI on the other hand has much more bandwidth and so supports multi channel, uncompressed audio (LPCM) which is vastly superior - better SQ, less latency. Having to use lossy encoders should be a thing of the past except sonos just want to make your life difficult.

kinger8938 · 10 Jan 2022 at 18:24

Yep some of their decisions are archaic

Thanks all for the replies. I have a better understanding of what I'm dealing with now, I'll most likely leave it as is and just plug in an optical as and when I want to play a game on pc in surround

The_Arbiter · 10 Jan 2022 at 18:47

I had a read as i never previously gave a thought about pcm/bitstream as i've never ran into issues myself in the past, so very insightful topic and thread.

What was it you were using the PC for out of curiosity? As you mentioned games at one point, but also pcm stereo working also.

I suppose one cack workaround could be remove that one button from the remote also

Bill Turnip · 10 Jan 2022 at 20:44

The_Arbiter said:
What was it you were using the PC for out of curiosity? As you mentioned games at one point, but also pcm stereo working also.

PCM stereo works just fine with sonos, it's when you attempt to use PCM with more than 2 channels, Sonos will not support and either keep it stereo (in the case of pcm) or not output any sound at all (in certain cases with DTS).

The DTS issue can be particularly confusing as if you are playing a blu Ray (as an example) the disc intro sound may work, but the film will output no sound at all. To muddy the issue further, the additional sound tracks for things like audio description and other languages may be stored as Dolby which WILL work with Sonos. A sound card from the pc is the easiest way to go, but it will necessitate an extra optical cable, and in my and OP's case a splitter.

Worth it though!

kinger8938 · 1 Feb 2022 at 11:48

Just digging this thread back up.

I now have a Beam Gen 2, and that does support LPCM as does my TV.

So should I now be able to get LPCM 5.1 For pc?

I get it for Switch now as that's LPCM too.

I had a quick go on pc and still getting pcm stereo but wondering if there's something I need to tweak somewhere

Bill Turnip · 1 Feb 2022 at 13:16

How is it connected? I'm presuming HDMI from PC to TV, then HDMI from TV to Beam? You will need to check that the TV HDMI that the Beam is connected to is an e-ARC connection, I think, as that's stated on the Sonos website under the audio tech specs. Check your TV manual, as it's probable that not all slots are e-ARC. There may be e-ARC settings on your TV to adjust as well.

Does the switch work as expected? I'm going to be guessing a little here I'm afraid, not set it up as an LPCM before, but it seems like it certainly should work.

kinger8938 · 1 Feb 2022 at 16:37

Bill Turnip said:
How is it connected? I'm presuming HDMI from PC to TV, then HDMI from TV to Beam? You will need to check that the TV HDMI that the Beam is connected to is an e-ARC connection, I think, as that's stated on the Sonos website under the audio tech specs. Check your TV manual, as it's probable that not all slots are e-ARC. There may be e-ARC settings on your TV to adjust as well.

Does the switch work as expected? I'm going to be guessing a little here I'm afraid, not set it up as an LPCM before, but it seems like it certainly should work.

Thanks for the reply!

Yep Nintendo switch now works in surround

Beam connects to the eArc (hdmi2) of the TV. EArc is on and audio is set to Passthrough on the TV end

Bill Turnip · 1 Feb 2022 at 16:48

If the Switch works properly, try connecting your PC to the HDMI input that you use for the switch. If that doesn't work, then we know it is the sound being outputted by the PC.

You may be able to find a specific LPCM sound file to download as a test?

kinger8938 · 1 Feb 2022 at 17:09

Bill Turnip said:
If the Switch works properly, try connecting your PC to the HDMI input that you use for the switch. If that doesn't work, then we know it is the sound being outputted by the PC.

You may be able to find a specific LPCM sound file to download as a test?

I'll have a go at that, good idea.

Is there a setting on the pc side to toggle to actually allow the 5.1 juices to flow so to speak?

*Edit

Found this, not sure if it's a legitimate thing to try. Will have a proper look later tonight

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ga...o-get-pc-surround-sound-to-work-with-earc?amp

Bill Turnip · 1 Feb 2022 at 17:55

It may help - this was the part I struggled with, and as my TV didn't have e-ARC I went no further, sorry.

I did see help tips about EDID handshakes and the like, but can't comment if it would work I'm afraid.

james.miller · 1 Feb 2022 at 20:11

kinger8938 said:
I'll have a go at that, good idea.

Is there a setting on the pc side to toggle to actually allow the 5.1 juices to flow so to speak?

*Edit

Found this, not sure if it's a legitimate thing to try. Will have a proper look later tonight

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gamerevolution.com/guides/660948-how-to-get-pc-surround-sound-to-work-with-earc?amp

Basics first - make sure your sound device is configured for multi channel output. how you get to this screen changes depending on what version of windows you are running, but in windows 11 it's settings >> system >> sound >> more sound settings OR you can search for "mmsys.cpl". find your device, click on configure, choose your setup.

You can also check the supported formats by clicking on the Properties button instead.

kinger8938 · 1 Feb 2022 at 20:20

james.miller said:
Basics first - make sure your sound device is configured for multi channel output. how you get to this screen changes depending on what version of windows you are running, but in windows 11 it's settings >> system >> sound >> more sound settings OR you can search for "mmsys.cpl". find your device, click on configure, choose your setup.

You can also check the supported formats by clicking on the Properties button instead.

Thanks for the post.. however.. I turned the pc on today and now it's working for no reason!

Weird! Will check the settings above anyway but currently trying a game and it's coming through in surround

*Checked the settings given above and yep I can now select 5.1 there and run a sound test.

All that wasnt there when I looked the other day, strange! These options were greyed out too but now I can pick 5.1 when right clicking the speaker icon in the tray

Sonos app reads it as outputting Multichannel PCM. Sorted.

Hopefully it stays like this from here on out. Thanks for the advice

Bill Turnip · 1 Feb 2022 at 20:57

Excellent, glad you got it sorted!