Is there a way to output sound by HDMI without video ?

DouglasteR

DouglasteR

Gawd
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Jan 6, 2006
Messages
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Hi there !

Im using the HDMI out of my 980ti to output PCM 7.1 audio to my receiver.

But somehow, Windows thinks theres a monitor there, because theres two screens in the Video Options.

This cause a series of problems, the mouse isnt limited by the screen, sometimes games start on the virtual monitor etc.

So i ask, is there a way to fix this ? Or im obliged to have a fake monitor to output audio ?

Thanks.
 
Have you tried making it a duplicate display and not a display extension?

That might fix your problem.

But yeah that is stupid. But that's what you get for relying on technology
 
Kwaz said:
Have you tried making it a duplicate display and not a display extension?

That might fix your problem.

But yeah that is stupid. But that's what you get for relying on technology
Click to expand...

I can't because my main monitor runs at 144hz, if i clone it, the driver bring it down to 60hz.

:(
 
Ahhh,

I honestly don't know for sure but I believe that it shouldn't do that. I believe that you can have separate monitors at different refresh rates and GSYNC / no GSYC from the literature I've read. The GSYNC monitor needs to be the primary display though.

I have a television hooked up to my computer which has a 144hz GSYNC monitor and that causes some primary display issues. And hear me out on this as the same fix might help you. When booting for instance I was getting a black screen until windows loaded. What I ended up doing to fix it was setting PCIE as the primary display in the bios and hooking the television (secondary display) up to the on-board graphics via hdmi. This separated them and averted any more issues.

So if you if hooking up a secondary display is in fact dropping your primary display down to 60hz maybe you can separate them like I did if you have on-board graphics? I do however believe this shouldn't be an issue.

Maybe you could do something similar?

I used to have a roommate that had a 7.1 ONKYO receiver hooked up via HDMI.

Can you hook your receiver up via Optical Toslink with on-board sound or a sound card?
 
If you disable the display, does the sound device disappear from the sound control panel? I haven't ever tried this, and you didn't mention if you tried it, so it might be worth a shot if you haven't.
 
extide said:
If you disable the display, does the sound device disappear from the sound control panel? I haven't ever tried this, and you didn't mention if you tried it, so it might be worth a shot if you haven't.
Click to expand...

That is a good idea!

I would bet that it will disable the sound though. Because you know. Nothing is never easy rofl
 
At this point, you have to have video to have sound. From a technical standpoint, sound via HDMI is transmitted in the video blanking period so there is no sound without a video signal. What video cards should be able to do, but can't, is send out a blackburst (black screen) signal with the sound on it when you ask them to do sound only. However they won't. Those of us that do this kind of thing (my system is the same setup) all need to write nVidia and tell them to add it to the drivers.

In the interm what I do is make a second screen and just place it on the lower-right corner of the actual monitor int he Windows configuration. Makes it hard to accidentally put my mouse on it, and I don't actually have anything display on it since there's no output hooked to the receiver.
 
Kwaz said:
Ahhh,

I honestly don't know for sure but I believe that it shouldn't do that. I believe that you can have separate monitors at different refresh rates and GSYNC / no GSYC from the literature I've read. The GSYNC monitor needs to be the primary display though.

I have a television hooked up to my computer which has a 144hz GSYNC monitor and that causes some primary display issues. And hear me out on this as the same fix might help you. When booting for instance I was getting a black screen until windows loaded. What I ended up doing to fix it was setting PCIE as the primary display in the bios and hooking the television (secondary display) up to the on-board graphics via hdmi. This separated them and averted any more issues.

So if you if hooking up a secondary display is in fact dropping your primary display down to 60hz maybe you can separate them like I did if you have on-board graphics? I do however believe this shouldn't be an issue.

Maybe you could do something similar?

I used to have a roommate that had a 7.1 ONKYO receiver hooked up via HDMI.

Can you hook your receiver up via Optical Toslink with on-board sound or a sound card?
Click to expand...

Toslink only pass 24bit 5.1 :(

HDMI is way superior

Kwaz said:
That is a good idea!

I would bet that it will disable the sound though. Because you know. Nothing is never easy rofl
Click to expand...

I cant disable the display without disabling the sound :(

Sycraft said:
At this point, you have to have video to have sound. From a technical standpoint, sound via HDMI is transmitted in the video blanking period so there is no sound without a video signal. What video cards should be able to do, but can't, is send out a blackburst (black screen) signal with the sound on it when you ask them to do sound only. However they won't. Those of us that do this kind of thing (my system is the same setup) all need to write nVidia and tell them to add it to the drivers.

In the interm what I do is make a second screen and just place it on the lower-right corner of the actual monitor int he Windows configuration. Makes it hard to accidentally put my mouse on it, and I don't actually have anything display on it since there's no output hooked to the receiver.
Click to expand...

Hmm, so this solved it, theyre interlaced so it seems.

Thanks for the info !
 
I tried duplicating screens, but what this does is drop the frame rate to the receivers framerate which is 60fps. So it was a no go. Sound will still turn off if your monitor power option turns it off when not being used.
Best solution is just have a sound card that uses DTS connect. I have an optical cable to the receiver. That way sound is always on even if your screen is in power save mode.
 
Most receivers have a passthrough via HDMI-out which is why windows is correctly seeing a ghost monitor. I use a similar setup, and there's some options available.

(1) Use swapscreen, and use it to lock the mouse to your main monitor. You can setup hotkeys to lock/release the mouse as well as a key that will allow unlimited movement once a specific key is held.
or
(2) In the display settings window, drag the ghost monitor to the low left or low right. This will usually prevent the mouse from wandering unto that screen.
12ppqu.png

or
(3) Use a modded HDMI cable or mod one yourself. When researching this a while back, I found a post somewhere with instructions on how to block one of the pins on the HDMI cable (with a small strip of tape for example) and windows will no longer create a ghost monitor and the audio will still work fine. Can't find it now, but I never bothered to test it.

Note: there will rarely be some issues, for example rarely some programs will insist on starting on the ghost monitor. If it's a program which uses one of the more modern windows APIs (most programs do), you can usually use a shortcut key (eg win+arrow keys) to move it around. However for older programs which don't use windows API but some other API, you'll need to disconnect the HDMI to force the app to your main window. That is a rare occurrence though.
 
Galvin said:
I tried duplicating screens, but what this does is drop the frame rate to the receivers framerate which is 60fps. So it was a no go. Sound will still turn off if your monitor power option turns it off when not being used.
Best solution is just have a sound card that uses DTS connect. I have an optical cable to the receiver. That way sound is always on even if your screen is in power save mode.
Click to expand...
TOSLINK can only carry 2.1 linear PCM. OP wants 7.1 linear PCM for his receiver. DTS Connect HD can carry 7.1 sound, but only in a compressed bitstream.
 
This was a really quick search and I only glanced at the article, but looks like you need to block pin 19 on the HDMI connector/cable and it will pass audio only without the video: HTPC + HDMI + Win7 and its many issues...

I'm sure you can google pin 19 hdmi block and probably find more stuff on Google.
 
Hopefully an easier solution will come. I didn't know about the pin 19trick. With 144hz displays. People are starting to ask this question more often now. And hope this can be solved thru software eventually.


When I tried this before. The computer would boot using the receiver as output instead of using my dvi connection. Not sure if this can be fixed. Once in windows it would use the dvi connection.

Also my dvi monitor is 1440p. I think the hdmi to the receiver is limited to 1080p so this may cause issues?

Thanks
 
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I'll have to try the pin 19 trick. All I want is to be able to use LPCM without the phantom display!
 
Galvin said:
Hopefully an easier solution will come. I didn't know about the pin 19trick. With 144hz displays. People are starting to ask this question more often now. And hope this can be solved thru software eventually.


When I tried this before. The computer would boot using the receiver as output instead of using my dvi connection. Not sure if this can be fixed. Once in windows it would use the dvi connection.

Also my dvi monitor is 1440p. I think the hdmi to the receiver is limited to 1080p so this may cause issues?

Thanks
Click to expand...
NVIDIA cards will initialize a display connected to HDMI first, by default. Then DVI and lastly DisplayPort. Don't ask me why...
 
I got an asus xonar hdmi sound card, then bought a composite to hdmi video adapter. I run the video adapter into the xonar, then the output of the xonar goes to the receiver. Full surround LPCM. Never run displays to a receiver since the receiver will add input lag. Seems counter intuitive to spend all that money on expensive fast displays to just send it through a receiver.
 
Unfortunately, they stopped selling those. Auzentech also had a solution like that, the HTHD which I have, but again those aren't on the market. It is just something that apparently nobody but me and a couple other people care about, because there isn't any sort of solution being sold. I had to retire my HTHD because there is no Windows 10 support. Initally there were some modded drivers that worked ok in Windows 10, though with a couple issues, but with the 1511 update it stopped working well and so I just retired it and went with videocard HDMI. Looks like the HDAV is in the same boat as it isn't on sale, and the last driver update was in 2013 for Windows 8. So at some point its old drivers will stop working and it'll have to be retired.

Very annoying. There's next to nothing even in the pro arena either. There are pro units that output blackburst HDMI and do audio, but none are suited to general use that I've found. The closest is the MOTU HDExpress and HDX-SDI. They do work, but only support stereo sound out in Windows, surround is only supported via ASIO which doesn't work with games. They also aren't updating their drivers for Windows anymore. The only workable solution I can find is to get a soundcard with 8 channels of AES/EBU output that supports surround sound, like an RME HDSPe AES and then convert it either with a ArVus AES-2H or a Blackmagic Audio to SDI and then SDI to HDMI. Either way that's a lot of gear and north of $2000 for a solution.
 
Sycraft said:
Unfortunately, they stopped selling those. Auzentech also had a solution like that, the HTHD which I have, but again those aren't on the market. It is just something that apparently nobody but me and a couple other people care about, because there isn't any sort of solution being sold. I had to retire my HTHD because there is no Windows 10 support. Initally there were some modded drivers that worked ok in Windows 10, though with a couple issues, but with the 1511 update it stopped working well and so I just retired it and went with videocard HDMI. Looks like the HDAV is in the same boat as it isn't on sale, and the last driver update was in 2013 for Windows 8. So at some point its old drivers will stop working and it'll have to be retired.

Very annoying. There's next to nothing even in the pro arena either. There are pro units that output blackburst HDMI and do audio, but none are suited to general use that I've found. The closest is the MOTU HDExpress and HDX-SDI. They do work, but only support stereo sound out in Windows, surround is only supported via ASIO which doesn't work with games. They also aren't updating their drivers for Windows anymore. The only workable solution I can find is to get a soundcard with 8 channels of AES/EBU output that supports surround sound, like an RME HDSPe AES and then convert it either with a ArVus AES-2H or a Blackmagic Audio to SDI and then SDI to HDMI. Either way that's a lot of gear and north of $2000 for a solution.
Click to expand...

Yep..... I constantly spend hours researching some solution that might work. Nothing ever comes up. If NVIDIA would just have the option to output a blank video signal on the HDMI and not use any graphics card resources, this would be so easy. Good luck finding a receiver to support ultrawide monitors, or any non-home theater resolution. Aint gona happen. The use of DDLive and DTS Connect is a lame and is not the same as raw linear pcm over hdmi. I have researched so many class d amplifiers and found a somewhat elegant solution, but it is definitely DIY. FYI, the HDAV is available on ebay. I bought mine used, and the win8 driver works just fine for w10.
 
Blocking the PIN does not remove the phantom display. It only prevents the audio & display devices from disappearing and disrupting your desktop when you power on / off the AVR or TV.

There are a few proper solutions to this problem, though some of them are obsolete.
1. Buy a HDMI sound card like the Auzentech HTHD and feed its HDMI input with a dummy signal from an external device such as a VGA to HDMI converter instead of connecting it to the GPU. Windows will send audio straight to the sound card, and the sound card will mix the audio with the dummy video signal from the external device.
2. There is a device called the Arvus USB-2H. It's a 7.1 channel USB audio device that generates a dummy HDMI signal with the USB audio.
3. Buy a device like the Cyp XA-3 or Gefen HD Pattern Signal Generator which converts 7.1 channel analog audio from your sound card to HDMI.
4. Buy an AVR with 7.1 channel analog inputs (Marantz) and perform bass management and room correction on the PC using Equalizer APO and Dirac Live.
 
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Resurrecting this thread because this is still a problem in June 2019. What a farce this is.

I guess computer hardware is just useless trash until there are finally HDMI 2.1 GPUs and we can just use HDMI for everything?

Sickeningly shitty industry.
 
With the prevalence of Atmos / DTS:X and how good the Atmos upmixer is, most of the above solutions are no longer an option. You need bitstreaming to the AVR. The only working solution is the Auzentech HTHD.
 
I annoys me that SPDIF never got an upgrade and we are stuck getting high quality multi-channel digital through Video connections.
 
I've been using extended desktop with the second screen positioned diagonally in the corner. The mouse cannot cross over diagonally. I've created a custom resolution of 1280x720 165 Hz on the HDMI output to match my 2560x1440 165 Hz monitor. This prevents stuttering and G-SYNC backlight flicker from mismatched refresh rates. The video signal is out of range for the AVR / TV but it still decodes the audio.
 
I agree with those putting the unused screen in a corner.
I place mine in the top left corner as its the one I am least likely to slam the mouse into.
It still happens but you get used to dragging the mouse down/right if the mouse disappears and it quickly becomes a none issue.

The downside, as already mentioned, windows can still put icons on that screen at random times.
To sort this out I use DesktopOK to save the icon positions on my desktop then they can be restored immediately.
You should of course save the icon positions if new icons are added.
It keeps a deletable history of previous saves in case you goof.
https://www.softwareok.eu/?seite=Freeware/DesktopOK
 
Monstieur said:
I've been using extended desktop with the second screen positioned diagonally in the corner. The mouse cannot cross over diagonally. I've created a custom resolution of 1280x720 165 Hz on the HDMI output to match my 2560x1440 165 Hz monitor. This prevents stuttering and G-SYNC backlight flicker from mismatched refresh rates. The video signal is out of range for the AVR / TV but it still decodes the audio.
Click to expand...

How do you force a refresh rate your AVR doesn't support? It won't let me do that.
 
Nenu said:
I agree with those putting the unused screen in a corner.
I place mine in the top left corner as its the one I am least likely to slam the mouse into.
It still happens but you get used to dragging the mouse down/right if the mouse disappears and it quickly becomes a none issue.

The downside, as already mentioned, windows can still put icons on that screen at random times.
To sort this out I use DesktopOK to save the icon positions on my desktop then they can be restored immediately.
You should of course save the icon positions if new icons are added.
It keeps a deletable history of previous saves in case you goof.
https://www.softwareok.eu/?seite=Freeware/DesktopOK
Click to expand...

That's unacceptable bush league bullshit and we all know it. I really want to interview Nvidia's CEO and ask him why he thinks this is acceptable.
 
bigbluefe said:
How do you force a refresh rate your AVR doesn't support? It won't let me do that.
Click to expand...
I use Custom Resolution Utility. I also deleted all unnecessary resolutions from the HDMI device since there wasn't a free slot to add a new resolution. Comb through all the nested settings carefully. I just kept 3840x2160 at all refresh rates so I can make use of the TV's motion interpolation. Then I added 1280x720 165 Hhz. Starting from LCD Standard timings, I tweaked the timings so that it exactly matched the refresh rate of my monitor (164.999 Hz). I added the resolution in the extension block and not under Standard Resolutions.
 
bigbluefe said:
At least AMD lets you clone displays and pick the higher resolution/refresh rate. I'm not convinced cloning is without its problems, though.
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I read there are smoothness issues when doing that, it appears to not be as straight forward as it looks.
A thought, perhaps it will work best when the resolutions are multiples of each other.
 
Yeah I had this problem too. Made the fake screen from the receiver be min resolution and put it in the top left corner. Shitty solution.
 
DF-1 said:
Yeah I had this problem too. Made the fake screen from the receiver be min resolution and put it in the top left corner. Shitty solution.
Click to expand...

Why isn't there a single website on the planet with the spine to fucking get the word about this out?

This is SUCH a user experience disaster that's probably trivial to fix but dumb ass computing sites don't even bring it up. Nvidia and AMD need to be called to task on this bullshit. I can't believe that this is going to be a DECADES old problem.
 
bigbluefe said:
Why isn't there a single website on the planet with the spine to fucking get the word about this out?

This is SUCH a user experience disaster that's probably trivial to fix but dumb ass computing sites don't even bring it up. Nvidia and AMD need to be called to task on this bullshit. I can't believe that this is going to be a DECADES old problem.
Click to expand...

Probably because there aren't many of us who do this :(. Sadly, most people seem to give almost zero fucks about computer audio. They'll toss a couple of cheap computer speakers under their monitor and call it good. Of those that do care, most seem to use headphones. It is a very small amount who want good surround sound, which generally means home theater equipment. There are just few of us that care, sadly.
 
Sycraft said:
Probably because there aren't many of us who do this :(. Sadly, most people seem to give almost zero fucks about computer audio. They'll toss a couple of cheap computer speakers under their monitor and call it good. Of those that do care, most seem to use headphones. It is a very small amount who want good surround sound, which generally means home theater equipment. There are just few of us that care, sadly.
Click to expand...

This.

And the computer Audiophiles dont care for anything above 2.1, and only use USB or optical out anyhow.
 
Auer said:
This.

And the computer Audiophiles dont care for anything above 2.1, and only use USB or optical out anyhow.
Click to expand...
This is true for stereo because HDMI is poor in comparison.
But I also have a lot of Hi Def surround music that need HDMI, the surround experience is brilliant.
Movies too.
 
Nenu said:
This is true for stereo because HDMI is poor in comparison.
But I also have a lot of Hi Def surround music that need HDMI, the surround experience is brilliant.
Movies too.
Click to expand...

Well the audiophile, or I suppose more accurately pro, solution is to get a multi-channel soundcard and run that to your amps or powered speakers. You can find all kinds of multi-channel soundcards out there like this. All well and good if that's what you are after, but of course there's reasons to want to use home theater equipment instead, room correction being an example, and just the fact that most multi-channel cards are really expensive.


Now all that said, this thread got me looking to see if things have changed and it is possible that the Blackmagic Decklink Mini Monitor is now a solution. Used to be they were pretty dumb about what they supported and basically it only worked with a couple apps that had dedicated APIs for it, however now it says it supports all kinds of things including a WDM driver. If they wrote their drivers right, they'd do the trick (Blackmagic stuff knows how to do blackburst). I'm kinda debating getting one to try... however in the past I have not had good experiences with their drivers so I don't know if I want to bother trying, since the phantom screen things DOES work. Just throwing it out there for others who might be interested. If you do decide to try it, make sure to get it form a place like Amazon or B&H with a good return policy in case it sucks.
 
I also think that a lot of people in the "PC audiophile" category are generally running HTPC setups with larger single monitors/TVs/projectors making the category of people who appreciate high quality audio on gaming specific high frame rate/dual monitor displays even smaller. It's absolutely ridiculous that this is still a problem, even taking in to account the small amount of users this affects. it's seems a quick adjustment in drivers allowing HDMI audio and DP picture would be pretty easy to implement, of course I'm not a software engineer so I could be wrong.

I wonder if there's a possibility for a third party program that could inject something into the display/audio driver allowing for this without users having to jump through a bunch of retarded hoops just to have lossless audio and high frame rates?
 
Sycraft said:
Well the audiophile, or I suppose more accurately pro, solution is to get a multi-channel soundcard and run that to your amps or powered speakers. You can find all kinds of multi-channel soundcards out there like this. All well and good if that's what you are after, but of course there's reasons to want to use home theater equipment instead, room correction being an example, and just the fact that most multi-channel cards are really expensive.


Now all that said, this thread got me looking to see if things have changed and it is possible that the Blackmagic Decklink Mini Monitor is now a solution. Used to be they were pretty dumb about what they supported and basically it only worked with a couple apps that had dedicated APIs for it, however now it says it supports all kinds of things including a WDM driver. If they wrote their drivers right, they'd do the trick (Blackmagic stuff knows how to do blackburst). I'm kinda debating getting one to try... however in the past I have not had good experiences with their drivers so I don't know if I want to bother trying, since the phantom screen things DOES work. Just throwing it out there for others who might be interested. If you do decide to try it, make sure to get it form a place like Amazon or B&H with a good return policy in case it sucks.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately soundcards dont have as good s/n as external DACs for stereo.
Its better to have an external stereo DAC and a good enough solution for surround

I had an Oppo 205 as an all round solution but it sounded a bit flat/lifeless and was returned.
So I got a Holo Audio Spring Level3 with a modded Singxer SU-1 USB to I2S converter, what an incredible stereo DAC.
And a medium to high end Denon AVR for surround/Atmos over HDMI.
I switch between the DAC inputs for the front speakers on the back of a power amp by selecting XLR (Holo Spring) or RCA (Denon AVR) for the cleanest signal path.

Absolute clarity doesnt matter so much with surround material hence I dont have a very high end AVR.
I may still get one in the future but I'm more than happy with this mixed setup for stereo/surround.
 
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