Videocard HDMI Audio Woes (highly technical)

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izusaga

Limp Gawd
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Oct 4, 2005
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This particular nuance has been driving me nuts for the past few years. I'd greatly appreciate any help on solving it, as it seems near impossible to find a relevant search engine result.

Configuration: 1080 Ti, Onkyo TX-NR636 Receiver (7.1), (2x) 2k widescreen 144hz displays

I've used HDMI audio out to a receiver for a few years now, from Windows 7 to Windows 10. When using HDMI audio to a receiver, Windows shows a third monitor output in the display configuration for the receiver (image attached).

There are multiple issues, from standby on the receiver changing the primary audio source to constant fluctuation in volume - but my biggest problem is power management. Whenever the monitors go to sleep, or the system goes to sleep, upon resume of the S3 state, active windows will randomly shift to the (3) receiver display. Sometimes I can use (WindowsKey+Directional Arrows) to shift the windows that are stuck off screen on display (3) back to the two actual monitors.. often I cannot. In addition to the window mess, the "primary" start menu bar also goes to display (3), so I lose the task bar.

Essentially, every single time I resume the system from sleep or monitor sleep, Windows 10 reorganizes everything and sticks half of the running windows on a "display" I cannot see, and 100% of the time I lose the task bar notification access and sound properties, etc. Sometimes I can shift the windows back, other times I'm forced to power cycle the receiver to get functionality back.

I've tried to search for HDMI audio cards that don't have a "video" output, which I suspect would be a solution to this issue. In addition, if I disable the "monitor" shown in Windows display properties then I lose the audio - so lose/lose there.

Any suggestions?
 

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Your receiver has optical (TOSLINK) inputs. Why not use that rather than HDMI?
 
izusaga said:
Unfortunately for me, 5.1 PCM is a bare minimum requirement for any audio editing (or, in my opinion, just audio listening..).
Click to expand...

TOSLINK can do 5.1 PCM, it just can't do some of the Dolby-DTS and newer formats. It also doesn't support 7.1 speaker setups. If you're running 5.1, it might be worth a listening test anyway. Assuming you have an optical out on your machine already, the only thing the test will cost you is a TOSLINK cable.
 
I'm guessing that you have the two monitors hooked up via DisplayPort. I don't think Windows can do straight-up audio via HDMI without also passing a video signal. There was someone in the AVS Forums that posted something to that effect a few years ago.
 
So not sure why you are having the screen shifting issues, that is annoying. I've been running the same kind of setup (one monitor via DP, receiver via HDMI) and it doesn't seem to have issues with putting stuff on the receiver display. So I know it can work and not be an issue, but I can't help with what to do :/

In terms of HDMI audio without video sadly you can't do that. Audio is translated in the blanking periods of video, it needs the video signal for clock.

Now what you can have is a card that knows how to do a "blackburst" signal, which means black screen for clock with just audio. The MOTU HDExpress and HDX-SDI can do this, and they'll do audio out over it no issues. The problem is when I tested them their drivers were an issue, particularly in that WDM only supported 2-channel out, you had to use ASIO to get surround. You could use an ASIO-WDM mixer like ASIO Link Pro but that is a pain in addition to more cost on top of the already expensive cards. They also don't appear to be updating their Windows drivers, they are still from 2014 which is when I tested it.

Auzentech used to make an option in the form of the HomeTheaterHD which you could try and find used. It is an audio card with HDMI out. It doesn't produce its own video signal though, so you need to feed it a video signal to work but you can use an old DVD player to the like to do that. I did that for awhile, but the Windows 10 drivers are a problem so I gave up and went with a direct feed from my GeForce.

There are some more complex options out there but unless you want to spend a lot of money and hassle, I wouldn't.

While it won't fix your problem any time soon, consider e-mailing nVidia and letting them know you want audio over HDMI without a video output. If enough people bother them about it, maybe they'll add it to the drivers.
 
one of the problems with optical at the moment, on win10 at least, is that it wont pass a 5.1 signal. theres currently a long standing bug that will only allow it to output 2.0. supposedly its fixed on the current insider preview build
 
another-user said:
one of the problems with optical at the moment, on win10 at least, is that it wont pass a 5.1 signal. theres currently a long standing bug that will only allow it to output 2.0. supposedly its fixed on the current insider preview build
Click to expand...

That depends on the sound device, not the OS.
 
Bandalo said:
That depends on the sound device, not the OS.
Click to expand...


pretty sure its a glitch right now, as MS has supposedly even acknowledge and fixed it. plus i can output 5.1 to anything right now, except under optical. under the speaker config tab on optical, the only option is 2 channel mode. analog has 5.1, and hdmi has 5.1, and dts atmos. and i run optical from my ps4 to my receiver, that outputs in 5.1 just fine.
 
Why not connect one of the monitors to the Onkyo and use it as a passthrough? Must both monitors be using DP?
 
Koween said:
Why not connect one of the monitors to the Onkyo and use it as a passthrough? Must both monitors be using DP?
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Both monitors are 2k. This particular receiver is limited to 1080 outputs for the passthrough. I'd lose half the usable resolution for both displays if I did HDMI passthrough. =/

Edit: I stand corrected! The PC input I was using was 1080, the two primary inputs on the receiver are both 4k! I can't believe I overlooked this before when testing it. You've solved my problem. Thank you!
 
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izusaga said:
Both monitors are 2k. This particular receiver is limited to 1080 outputs for the passthrough. I'd lose half the usable resolution for both displays if I did HDMI passthrough. =/

Edit: I stand corrected! The PC input I was using was 1080, the two primary inputs on the receiver are both 4k! I can't believe I overlooked this before when testing it. You've solved my problem. Thank you!
Click to expand...

Nice :D. Only thing to make sure is that you are getting full 444 color through it. Sometimes some receivers are sneaky and downsample the colour. Other than that, good to hear someone was able to help you.
 
Sycraft said:
Nice :D. Only thing to make sure is that you are getting full 444 color through it. Sometimes some receivers are sneaky and downsample the colour. Other than that, good to hear someone was able to help you.
Click to expand...

I'm currently more curious as to why every hour or so the HDMI pass-through starts to flicker off and on repeatedly and then the monitor signal is lost completely until I power cycle the receiver..
 
another-user said:
one of the problems with optical at the moment, on win10 at least, is that it wont pass a 5.1 signal. theres currently a long standing bug that will only allow it to output 2.0. supposedly its fixed on the current insider preview build
Click to expand...
The bug you're referring to and its correction is regarding 5.1 encoding with DDL or DTS encoders. Optical and coaxial spdif interfaces only support 5.1 with lossy codecs. For lossless PCM, the channel limit is 2. As the OP wants lossless, optical is not a solution for him, regardless of OS used.

I used to run into the same problems (and more) with my 3D surround setup. As my displays were running 120hz over DVI, I couldn't pass any through a receiver for my 7.1 setup, so I had a virtual 4th display through HDMI to the receiver, and apps would sometimes default to it. Never did find a good solution, although as an alternative work around, I did run hdmi out from the receiver back to one of the already connected displays. That way when a program decided to move to the virtual display, I could briefly change inputs on the monitor that was connected to both my computer and receiver so i could find the program and move it back.

The only other solution I've found "feasible" was to use the above mentioned Auzentech soundcard in combination with an hdmi dummy signal generator. Granted, this solution isn't great, as it relies on old, unsupported hardware :(
 
izusaga said:
I'm currently more curious as to why every hour or so the HDMI pass-through starts to flicker off and on repeatedly and then the monitor signal is lost completely until I power cycle the receiver..
Click to expand...
I had a similar issue with a pj, long hdmi cable, pc and a tv tuner - with the tv tuner as a source it would start flickering and lose signal within a minute, the pc was no problem. At 720p the tuner worked fine. I figured my cable was too long and/or too crappy and perhaps the tv tuner had a "weaker" signal and because of that would lose connection quite fast. Perhaps your issue is similar and a shorter or better cable would ensure the connection stays put.
I know it's a digital signal but the frequencies there are high and there may be problems if the wire is too thin or the whole construction of the cable is too sensitive to noise - perhaps that causes a signal loss after a while.
 
Koween said:
I had a similar issue with a pj, long hdmi cable, pc and a tv tuner - with the tv tuner as a source it would start flickering and lose signal within a minute, the pc was no problem. At 720p the tuner worked fine. I figured my cable was too long and/or too crappy and perhaps the tv tuner had a "weaker" signal and because of that would lose connection quite fast. Perhaps your issue is similar and a shorter or better cable would ensure the connection stays put.
I know it's a digital signal but the frequencies there are high and there may be problems if the wire is too thin or the whole construction of the cable is too sensitive to noise - perhaps that causes a signal loss after a while.
Click to expand...

In this case it was something with the HDMI cable. Swapped to a thicker, better shielded 1.4 and haven't had a flicker since. (yet, knock on wood)
 
another-user said:
pretty sure its a glitch right now, as MS has supposedly even acknowledge and fixed it. plus i can output 5.1 to anything right now, except under optical. under the speaker config tab on optical, the only option is 2 channel mode. analog has 5.1, and hdmi has 5.1, and dts atmos. and i run optical from my ps4 to my receiver, that outputs in 5.1 just fine.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure you need both an encoder on the PC to transport the bitstream in Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect along with an external decoder to expand it to 5.1 channels. You need to set the encoder in both the Windows audio properties and your sound device driver settings. It was working in Windows 10 version 1607, but I heard it's broken in 1703.
 
izusaga said:
This particular nuance has been driving me nuts for the past few years. I'd greatly appreciate any help on solving it, as it seems near impossible to find a relevant search engine result.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

I bet you can get an HDMI display emulator like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EK05WTY (edited: this one emulates audio capabilities)

So your audio path would always be VideoCard -- HDMI -> Receiver -- HDMI out -> emulator for sound.
And you'll have two monitors connected to other vide card outputs. Turning them on or off should not change the default audiio output.
 
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Alright, it's time for an update. Overall, passing the second vertical 2k through the 4k HDMI out of the receiver has worked well. However:

100% of the time after the system resumes from sleep, the HDMI pass through will flicker constantly every few minutes until the HDMI cord between the receiver and monitor has been unplugged and re-plugged. Once the HDMI cord is re-connected, the flickering stops until the next time the system is put to sleep and resumed again. Of course, this also means all windows are shuffled to the primary (all browsing windows normally reside in the vertical, as that's the entire reason it's there), so I have to re-organize tiled browsing and performance monitoring windows every single time I resume from sleep, also.

So, I went from having to turn off the receiver every time I resume from sleep to shift windows to now having to unplug the HDMI out every time I resume from sleep to regain non-flickering functionality. Just seems like I can't win, all I want to do is resume from sleep and not have to fiddle with the damn receiver every day!
 
izusaga said:
Just seems like I can't win, all I want to do is resume from sleep and not have to fiddle with the damn receiver every day!
Click to expand...

Here's my report. I as wrote my reply last week, I said "Hell, I need to get that HDMI emulator dongle, I keep having the same sound switching issues". So I did.
So far it is working as expected. Plugged it into the receiver's HDMI output. Re-connected monitors directly to the video card (DP out), and receiver to HDMI out.
The emulator shows as a 3rd monitor. Changed the output so it duplicates my main monitor:
lMfgBJH.png


So far all works as expected. Monitors go to sleep as expected, the sound output stays the same (the dongle) and speaker config does not change after reboots or sleep.
Best $10 I've ever spent.
 
Worth a shot, I've snagged the emulator and it should be in Sunday. Thanks for the info.
 
What model Fit did you purchase? I have a GS and it won't exceed 30hz at 2k even though it's rated for 60hz at 4k and 120hz at 2k..

Edit: False alarm. nVidia control panel wouldn't let me exceed 30hz @ 2560x1440 even with a custom configured resolution, but the monitor display properties let me set it up. I'm now successfully configured with the duplicated extended display running the headless HDMI. Lets see how it works!
 
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Well.. no dice. No matter what I do, I cannot get a Fit-GS (rated for 120hz @ 1080 and 60hz @ 4k) to run over 30hz at any resolution. Even when manually set to 60hz, it immediately reverts to 30. Amazon seller hasn't responded to any e-mails (of course..) so I'm now trying to reach the manufacturer..
 
izusaga said:
Well.. no dice. No matter what I do, I cannot get a Fit-GS (rated for 120hz @ 1080 and 60hz @ 4k) to run over 30hz at any resolution. Even when manually set to 60hz, it immediately reverts to 30. Amazon seller hasn't responded to any e-mails (of course..) so I'm now trying to reach the manufacturer..
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that. Did you un-check [ ] Hide unsupported resolutions?
As you can see on the screenshot it works just fine for me. Since then I made it to duplicate my secondary, non-gaming monitor. Primary runs 1080p@144hz, secondary 1200p@90Hz.
 
izusaga said:
I'm currently more curious as to why every hour or so the HDMI pass-through starts to flicker off and on repeatedly and then the monitor signal is lost completely until I power cycle the receiver..
Click to expand...

An Onkyo 636? Do you suffer for the HDMI board issues that were around a few years ago? My HDMI board in my 808 went out twice!
 
hlfbkd420 said:
An Onkyo 636? Do you suffer for the HDMI board issues that were around a few years ago? My HDMI board in my 808 went out twice!
Click to expand...

What are the symptoms? I run a 636 and an 838. The 838 had various HDMI issues with a projector, but since it's been swapped to a TV I haven't experienced them persisting.
 
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