HDMI, audio, and bitstream questions.....

[candy76man]

Let me explain what I my setup is first.

In my house the livingroom home theater setup is on the wall opposite the room (and wall) where my pc is.
My pc is a I7 860 machine with two Radeon HD5670 cards and a bluray player in it.
I have a Onkyo AV reciever in my home theater that can accept and decode bitstream dolby truhd and dts master.

Basically what I want to do is run a hdmi cable through the wall to my onkyo receiver along with a usb cable for a wireless mouse/keyboard to controll the pc from the livingroom. I will put a hdmi splitter on the output for my main pc monitor ( I have a three moniter setup on my pc) and run one line to the main monitor and the other will connect through the wall to my onkyo reciever so I get my desktop on the tv in the livingroom.
I know all that will work like I want but where I am not sure is on the audio side of things.

I don't want to have to change any settings on my pc to go from listening to a bluray in truhd in the living room or listening to just general audio from my pc (music, games, desktop sounds,etc) in the livingroom. I assume I can do both over just the hdmi cable correct?

What about sound on my pc though..If I have it set to output sound (bitstream and general audio) over hdmi to the livingroom will I still get analog audio out of my xfi soundcard on my pc speakers at the same time or can it only do one at a time?


Hopefully I explained that well enough but if not please ask for clarification and I'll do my best.

Thanks for any tips...I have searched around a good bit but can't find an answer to my question.

 

[delusion_]

You'll need to turn off your sound card and instead use your HDMI connection for all of your PC's sound.

I don't know about your specific hardware, but I know for my ATI card, you can install the Realtek HDMI audio drivers to make regular Windows sounds go through your HDMI:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1093618

This lets me play a game, listen to music, etc. but then also be able to fire up a Blu-Ray on the PC and it streams raw DTS/etc. to the receiver.

 

[Mozex]

What about sound on my pc though..If I have it set to output sound (bitstream and general audio) over hdmi to the livingroom will I still get analog audio out of my xfi soundcard on my pc speakers at the same time or can it only do one at a time?

Only one default at a time, but multiple outputs can be in use. Programs tend to be limited to outputting on the "default" audio interface, but some programs allow you to specify what device they output on. Voice chat apps and media players are pretty good about letting you select what device they use.

A good solution for you would be to make the xfi card the default audio device and then configure the HMDI audio device as the output for your blu-ray player.

 

[Roughy]

I agree with Mozex. You can have more than one audio output at a time but only one of them is default (which is normal to be this way). So if you Blu-ray player has the option to select the audio device (and most probably it has) than just use the xfi card as default. If the player can use only the default device then you should think of some other possibilities - changing the player or selecting the other device as default and configuring the rest of the programs you use one by one but since all of them may not be capable of using other device than the default one, you may need sometimes to change the default device manually.

 

[af22]

When you output bitsteam surround sound (dolby digital, DTS.. etc) no other audio source will be played. The surround sound will take over everything.

 

[Mozex]

When you output bitsteam surround sound (dolby digital, DTS.. etc) no other audio source will be played. The surround sound will take over everything.

That's the first I've heard of this but it makes sense, that only applies on a per-output device level though right? You should be able to play a bluray on a TV and still have a voice chat going through a USB headseat.

 

[af22]

That's the first I've heard of this but it makes sense, that only applies on a per-output device level though right? You should be able to play a bluray on a TV and still have a voice chat going through a USB headseat.

Nope. If you go to your audio properties. For dolby digital or DTS to work, you must enable "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device". If you uncheck that box, bitstream surround sound won't work.

 

[Mozex]

Nope. If you go to your audio properties. For dolby digital or DTS to work, you must enable "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device". If you uncheck that box, bitstream surround sound won't work.

Ok, I see that checkbox, but doesn't "this device" only apply to that one device, e.g. a video card's hdmi. A USB headset is a separate audio device in the control panel as is a PCI sound card.