Pc - av seperate hdmi losing bass

craig1366

craig1366

craig1366

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So, I have recently upgraded my PC and bought myself a home cinema system. The hdmi is coming out of a Nidia gtx 980ti and into a sony str dh550, which has a set of tannoy sfx 5.1 speakers plugged in. And of course a telly. The hdmi lead comprises of 2 3m hdmi cables connected by a double ended female hdmi connector, I don't know if this may be suspect. Anyway the issue is that although I get picture and sound fine, the bass just doesn't kick. I also have an Xbox 360 connected to the Sony unit, if I go on YouTube on the Xbox the whole room shakes, at the same volume, or even much louder the same song even just does not kick, it's like the sub woofer isn't connected, I have noted that the other day the power led went green for the first time on the back of sfx sub, where it is usually red, but this didn't seem to affect the sound. So why would I get so much bass from the Xbox and nothing on he PC. I checked eq settings on the av but it is the same for both inputs. I feel as if I should have an additional cable, digital optical or 2rca to 3.5mm from the computer to av unit, but it is my understanding the hdmi should do this fine, but the difference in audio makes me question it. And yes I went into the Nvidia control panel to make sure it knows it has 5.1 speakers connected but no joy, same sound.

Thank you for any help
 
I think the problem centers around the Nvidia settings. I'm not the most familiar with PC gfx cards and HDMI audio so someone else with better first hand knowledge might be able to add more detail here. Each time I have set up a media PC it's always been fairly straightforward for me. If this were a Blu-ray player then I'd suspect from your description that the audio being sent it 5.1 LPCM when it really should be Bitstream.

Bitstream is the raw data. If the amp gets this then the DD/DTS/TrueHD/DTS MA display will show up on the front panel when receiving the signal from a DVD, Blu-ray or game with DD/DTS or HD surround. If the front panel reads LPCM then the settings on the card need to be adjusted.

LPCM can be anything from digital mono/stereo/2.1/3.1/4.0/5.1/6.1 or 7.1 audio. The sound quality can be anything from the lowest resolution equivalent of crappy 64kbps MP3 through to uncompressed high resolution audio at 192kHz/24 bit. The reason why the channels don't all fire up is that the amp is acting as a basic volume control and simply taking what it is given from the source. If the signal is stereo (2.0) then just the left and right speakers will work; no sub, no centre and no surrounds. That's okay if you have full range front speakers, but not so good with a sub/sat system.

Some amps and receivers have the ability to add an extra layer of processing on top of the signal being received. This means 2.0 can be processed using Dolby ProLogic so that all the speakers fire up. Have a look at the settings on your amp too. If it is set to "Direct" or whatever Sony are calling it then the PC will be in the driving seat. Setting the amp to "Surround" should allow you a bit more scope to play around with the audio processing on those occassions where the disc/stream/game is in basic stereo. Ideally though you should go back to the PC settings and get Bitstream enabled.
 
Probably just need to configure your receiver in windows audio settings thinking about it

Just set it to 7.1 and say all the speakers are 'large', and let the receiver sort it out.
 
I messed around with a lot of settings and I think I managed to enable bitstream, but it's still no good. Can still flick over to the Xbox and I've got all the bass I could ever want, I just wish I could get it out the PC too, as I watch films/play games/music so it would be good
 
I have looked into bitstream, i changed all sorts of settings but it seems it is only really doing it if a film is on (video file open) but even then it doesn't seem to make a difference. When I go into playback devices and configure my device and go to either of 5.1 (or 7.1/2.1) settings it just does not make the sub make a noise, (that I can hear).If i play something really bassy turned up relly loud it sounds almost like it trying, but really just nothing, even with the receiver turned up to 60. I go on the xbox and play the same things on the youtube app for xbox and the whole room is vibrating at anything above 20! This just doesn't make sense to me.
 
so deconfiguring the speakers fixed everything. Went into playback devices > hdmi audio playback device > configure, and set it to stereo 2.0 and low and behold the amp just sorts everything out. I can't beleive I messed it up by trying to set it up haha.
 
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