HDMI from PC to AVR for both audio and video?

c3k

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Folks,

A question for the cognoscenti: I'm running an FX8350 w/GTX670 gpu as my HTPC. (See sig.) I have a single HDMI cable coming from the video card into my AVR (Denon X4100W). That HDMI is carrying both audio and video from my PC.

- would it be "better" to use the HDMI just for video and use the mobo sound output for audio?

Thanks,

Ken
 
Folks,

A question for the cognoscenti: I'm running an FX8350 w/GTX670 gpu as my HTPC. (See sig.) I have a single HDMI cable coming from the video card into my AVR (Denon X4100W). That HDMI is carrying both audio and video from my PC.

- would it be "better" to use the HDMI just for video and use the mobo sound output for audio?

Thanks,

Ken

As far as I know, you won't be able to do the audio pass-thru for things like Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD. The media player would off-load the data directly on to the AVR, and let the AVR handle the decoding. By using the mobo audio jacks, directly to your AVR, it will still be the CPU doing the decoding.

However, to me, this was a thing of the past where CPUs just weren't good enough and we let the GPU handle the video decoding/acceleration and let the AVR handle the audio decoding. I still do this.
 
Thanks.

My goal is to have the AVR do all the decoding. If that can't be done, then I think the cpu/mobo via the audio out jack (toslink) would be better than having the gpu process sound.
 
What Phrik said is correct, you ideally want the GPU to be sending the audio bitsream untampered and unprocessed to your AVR, i'm assuming this is mainly for watching movies and videos essentially? it's effectively an audio passthrough, the GPU isn't processing the audio as such, it's just sending it via hdmi to the receiver for it to handle it, which is the better option.

The Audio on your PC via toslink will not be able to send all of the audio formats that your AVR can handle, you'll be downgrading your audio.

Your amp supports every current audio format, including ATMOS, toslink will do DTS at the most, forget about DTS-MA or True-HD
 
Thanks.

My goal is to have the AVR do all the decoding. If that can't be done, then I think the cpu/mobo via the audio out jack (toslink) would be better than having the gpu process sound.

As kaigame said, the GPU won't process the sound, it just sends the bit stream through, no processing is done, it's still the AVR doing the decoding. But you have to set this up on your preferred media player, like Kodi has this option.
 
Works great. I use passthrough to TV and Optical cable from tv to reciever. DTS and Dolby Digital works without any problem.
 
Been doing that setup for years and it works great. 1 cable to my amp for everything and it'll decode every format I throw at it.
 
Folks,

A question for the cognoscenti: I'm running an FX8350 w/GTX670 gpu as my HTPC. (See sig.) I have a single HDMI cable coming from the video card into my AVR (Denon X4100W). That HDMI is carrying both audio and video from my PC.

- would it be "better" to use the HDMI just for video and use the mobo sound output for audio?

Thanks,

Ken

As stated in previous posts the way you have it is best option. I used it on my HTPC for years. You just have to make sure the media players are setup to bitstream. One thing you have to take into consideration is games, I don't know of any PC that bitstream audio like Dolby Digital or DTS. So it usually defaults to 2 channel PCM. So you'll have to go into the speaker setup and make it 5.1 or 7.1. Then when you play games it will output 5.1 or 7.1 PCM.
 
I think I did have one PC game that output one of the compressed formats (DD I believe) but they're obviously non-standard. Everything else just uses PCM and the speaker format you set in the Windows control panel. If you use Media Player Classic for videos, you just need to make sure you tell it to bitstream (look under the audio decoder in "Internal Filters"). It'll play anything you throw at it, including Atmos and DTS:X. Netflix and Amazon both use DD+.
 
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