Marantz NR1501 is unable to play HDMI audio from GTX780

I added a 4th monitor to my surround system and when my Sound Blaster Omni died, I had the genius idea of getting surround sound to my receiver through HDMI.

Problem is, it doesn't work.

The weird part is that the Nvidia HDMI sound card recognizes that it's connected to a receiver and I can configure 5.1 speaker - but nothing comes out.

I tried different HDMI cables and different ports on the receiver - no worky.

My Tivo mini and Blu-Ray player both work fine with HDMI audio.

I've done some searching and it seems other people may have had similar issues, but nothing was really conclusive.

The receiver supports HDMI 1.3 - I've also tried running that video connection at different resolutions (1080i/25, 1080p 50hz, 1280x1024, 1366x768) does not matter - no sound.

Have you tried different drivers? Also are you sure the receiver is set to be the main audio device for windows? (you can check by clicking the little speaker bottom right and at the top it will have the device) You can change the default audio device in sounds, you may have more than one and its defaulting to another.

If you have 4 monitors you need to make sure to select the right hdmi output as well, otherwise it might be trying to use a monitor as the output device

I went back and tried to get this working again - I have a lot of audio devices and I'm very familiar with the process of making them enabled/disabled and setting the default device.

What I just found is that I can get HDMI audio via the receiver connected to the 4th screen ONLY when I do not have all 3 DVI monitors activated - which completely defeats my purpose.

This is how I'm connected:

780GTX1 = DVI-1, DVI-2, HDMI
780GTX2 = DVI-3

You would think it would make sense to put 2 connections per card, but NV Surround is picky about how you do this and it seems that the "accessory" display has to be on the primary video card (which also has to run 2 of the 3 screens)

I know older cards used to share the DVI and HDMI resources in some way and while the 780 can run 4 screens, I can't tell if this is a driver problem or a hardware limitation.

I'm wondering if running from the DisplayPort through a DP-HDMI adapter would help? If it's a limitation of the HDMI section, this may over come it. I suppose I could run a DP cable direct to the 4th screen and see if I can get sound - that will probably be a good indicator of my chances for success.

pretty sure you are running into a hardware limitation, as far I know you can't use both of the dvi connectors and hdmi at the same time(at least this is my experience with cards before the 700 series and I don't know if its changed). I would say run it off the other card but you say there are issues with surround. If its the same pc as the one in your sig have you tried enabling and using the hdmi on the motherboard that runs through the intel graphics on cpu?

munkle said:

pretty sure you are running into a hardware limitation, as far I know you can't use both of the dvi connectors and hdmi at the same time(at least this is my experience with cards before the 700 series and I don't know if its changed). I would say run it off the other card but you say there are issues with surround. If its the same pc as the one in your sig have you tried enabling and using the hdmi on the motherboard that runs through the intel graphics on cpu?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions - I do remember when the DVI/HDMI connections were limited but on the 780 at least, you can run all 4 ports (DVI Double Link X 2 + HDMI + DP) at the same time.
Also, I have a 2600k which does not have GPU capability. (I actually thought of this because the z77 chipset supports it and I have an HDMI port on the motherboard - then I remembered...)


It is starting to look like this is an NVidia limitation - some people have the same problem I have:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1802259

And other people are saying they have it whenever SLI is enabled.

I went to far as to research HDMI Sound Cards (would require going from mATX to ATX) which I would consider except that they are basically discontinued and very expensive - they were made to bridge the time when not everything was HDMI.

The other solution I found was this:

http://en.cypress.com.tw/store/catalog/app/product/CPHD-3A/HDMIPCAudio-Generator-and-Analyzer

That thing does exactly what I want to do - it lets you take discrete 8 channel audio and inject it into an HDMI connection (along with a test pattern or probably blank frames) and send it along to your receiver.

Too bad it's like $1600

I'm willing to go to great lengths, but I could get a new AVR with discrete inputs for a lot less than that.

The Cypress unit is for professional A/V Engineers - it's too bad someone does not make a more limited function device to let people more simply inject audio into an HDMI stream but my problem is probably only experienced by less than 0.1% of users so it would still probably cost an arm and a leg

why not get a cheap sound card with optical to the receiver?

Every 2600k has integrated graphics, your mobo may disable it if a video card is inserted. The only sandy bridge chip that is unlocked without graphics is the 2550k. So either you have a 2550k or you have integrated graphics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge

why not get a cheap sound card with optical to the receiver?

Click to expand...

His mobo has optical out, this would be pointless.

mnewxcv said:

why not get a cheap sound card with optical to the receiver?

Click to expand...

I have plenty of good sound - in stereo.

I'm trying to get 5.1 surround sound to work in games. It's currently working through my Xonar U7 but there is a significant delay between an ingame action and when you hear the sound - no doubt due to the processing overhead of the Dolby Digital Live! encoder (which sends the 5.1 sound to my AVR)

munkle said:

Every 2600k has integrated graphics, your mobo may disable it if a video card is inserted. The only sandy bridge chip that is unlocked without graphics is the 2550k. So either you have a 2550k or you have integrated graphics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge



His mobo has optical out, this would be pointless.

Click to expand...

Ok thanks! - my first motherboard for this cpu was a P67 chipset which I think did not support it - it's been a few years so my memory was that it was the CPU. I'll try the onboard video next but there has been an interesting discovery.

I connected my Accessory monitor to my 780 using DisplayPort and I was able to play audio through that monitor while running a game in surround mode.

I now think the audio cut-off over HDMI is some kind of HDCP protection system, but I'm not sure.

Edit - I just went back again switched the Accessory monitor to direct HDMI and the sound does not work.

This seems like very good news - perhaps a DP to HDMI adapter will trick the card into outputting 8 channel audio? I'm not completely sure though because the DP standard contains HDMI so it may detect that I'm back in HDMI and turn it off - but in any case, it's a strong hint that it's an HDMI and likely an HDCP based limitation.