Denon AVR-1910 and 5.1 Speaker issues connection HTPC

Schizophonic · 4 Nov 2020 at 21:18

At the moment my HTPC is not outputting to its native 5.1 speaker setup when I have media content. When I switch on my TV and AMP and TV - its only outputting to 2.1 and its the only type of speaker setup its seeing. All of this is connected to HDMI.

To get around this strange issue, I have to push off the Power switch and push it back on and then my amp sees the 5.1 speaker. Its really weird as the only thing I've done was to re calibrate the speaker distance via the calibration tool and made a few minor changes in the settings after watching a youtube about speaker calibration.

Any ideas what settings to check?

lucid · 5 Nov 2020 at 05:19

PCs re notoriously unreliable at refreshing their HDMI handshake after the initial try at boot up, so what you're seeing fits that pattern. When the amp is off (and the TV too), the voltage in the HDMI cable wakes the various HDMI receiver circuits in the amp and TV. But without the amp on the chain reports on the audio capabilities of the TV only, which is stereo speakers, and so the HDMI out in the PC sends 2.1 audio which is what the TV speakers can deal with.

When the amp is on, the PC doesn't handshake again. It should, but it doesn't. What you have then is the system still set to 2.1 audio. If you were to unplug and reconnect the HDMI cable between the PC and the amp then you'd force a HDMI handshake refresh. It's a bit brutal though.

A better solution is to spoof the PC in to seeing a 5.1 capable sink device regardless of whether the amp is on or not. This is done with an EDID manager.

An EDID Manager is a small box that sits in-line with the HDMI connection between two devices. You would place this between the PC and the amp. The basic ones for under £20 come with a little rotary dial control to select various picture resolution and audio format combinations. In your case you'll use either 1080p 5.1CH (this is DD/DTS), or 1080p HD for 1080p with up to Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Once dialled in, then next time the PC boots it will get a report that the HDMI chain is ready for 1080p res with whichever audio resolution you've selected.

Go to the rain forest site or Ebay and look up HDMI EDID Manager Emulator. That should bring up enough hits that you can see what it is and choice the price/delivery options that suit you best.

Schizophonic · 5 Nov 2020 at 08:48

lucid said:
PCs re notoriously unreliable ......

Thanks for the reply.

The weird thing is, my HTPC worked fine before I did the speaker calibration. I plugged in the microphone and began tweaking.
After the tweaks, it all just went down hill.

Do all amps do this as I'm planning to upgrade early next year?

lucid · 5 Nov 2020 at 09:00

Off the top of my head I can't think of a reason for that. Have you tried pulling the mains plug on the amp to do a complete power cycle and then letting the PC reboot?