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

[Monstieur]

It goes like this:
Connect computer to tv with hdmi.
Connect computer to receiver with hdmi converted from any other port on graphics card or the integrated hdmi on your motherboard.

Two connections to the GPU is not acceptable. Windows displays a second monitor resulting in all the issues discussed above.

 

[Zaxter]

Two connections to the GPU is not acceptable. Windows displays a second monitor resulting in all the issues discussed above.

The second connection to the receiver will allow the audio to make it unaltered- and yes the ghost monitor remains- albeit addressable by other methods mentioned. That ghost screen is such a small caveat to being able to get the audio there however- which is another and I believe paramount concern considering that I use Tidal and can hear that major quality difference during Master quality playback.

 

[BWX]

The second connection to the receiver will allow the audio to make it unaltered- and yes the ghost monitor remains- albeit addressable by other methods mentioned. That ghost screen is such a small caveat to being able to get the audio there however- which is another and I believe paramount concern considering that I use Tidal and can hear that major quality difference during Master quality playback.

You can do that without a switch then. That's what I'm doing right now. I have one of the display ports on the back of the GTX1070 with a display port to HDMI converter going to a different input on my Yamaha RX-A880. That created a second "ghost" screen. I have that set to 720p and on the top corner so cursor doesn't accidentally go there.

Then in the Nvidia drivers I have the audio to my monitor out HDMI disabled, and I set the ghost screen audio to 7.1, or Atmos, or whatever.

The only issue is windows or Nvidia drivers thinks there's no audio or switched to the wrong audio (HDMI going to the TV). The first problem is handled by disabling all audio in Nvidia driver control panel accept for the ghost screen.

Then what happens is once in a while windows will think they isn't an audio device for whatever reason after waking up from sleep.

So I just go to the "sound" control panel and when I open that up it pops back on as normal. I think that is another bug in windows. Sometimes that doesn't happen.

My solution is a shortcut on the desktop to the sound control panel. If the audio isn't working I just click on that shortcut and it pops back on.

In the "sound" control panel I also disable all the other devices so windows doesn't try to output audio over the HDMI port going to my monitor (TV).

I think all these Windows bugs would happen no matter what. Windows has always been buggy when it comes to audio devices and tries to switch to ones that you don't want all the time if you have multiple connected. Also Nvidia drivers re-enables the audio on the monitor HDMI port all the time without me doing anything. So that's a bug in the Nvidia drivers. Most of the time it just works though. And I have HDCP enabled which I doubt would be possible with a $40 switch.

 

[Monstieur]

You should use a HDMI 2.0 EDID emulator to prevent dropouts on the AVR connection.

 

[amd7674]

Yeap this is very tricky. I cannot get windows 10 and its native Netflix app to play 4K content via gtx 1060 (6gb) when using HDMI audio to my non 4K avr. I created 2nd 720p monitor as my marantz avr . However if I use toslink instead HDMI, Netflix allows me to play 4K.

 

[Nenu]

Yeap this is very tricky. I cannot get windows 10 and its native Netflix app to play 4K content via gtx 1060 (6gb) when using HDMI audio to my non 4K avr. I created 2nd 720p monitor as my marantz avr . However if I use toslink instead HDMI, Netflix allows me to play 4K.

Thats probably an HDCP (copy protection) version issue.
The second display (AVR) doesnt use a new enough version of HDCP.
But it might be down to where it thinks the video is being passed (through the AVR) doesnt have a new enough version of HDCP.
ie no outbound connection from AVR with good enough HDCP, not allowed.

 

[Vega]

Ugg, I'm running into the same problem. Don't want to have a second display for my receiver going. I think it affects GPU performance and smoothness. Any creative fixes lately?

 

[Monstieur]

Ugg, I'm running into the same problem. Don't want to have a second display for my receiver going. I think it affects GPU performance and smoothness. Any creative fixes lately?

Buy a 120 Hz TV and use eARC. That’s the only solution apart from those HDMI sound cards.

Cloned display has no issues if your AVR supports the resolution at 120 Hz over HDMI.

 

[Sycraft]

Ugg, I'm running into the same problem. Don't want to have a second display for my receiver going. I think it affects GPU performance and smoothness. Any creative fixes lately?

Nope, it is something that just nobody seems to care about that sort of thing on computers :/. The "best" solution is a monitor that does VRR and high framerate over HDMI and then just do passthrough since that is an option these day.

Or to just abandon HDMI, which is what I did :/

 

[BWX]

Ugg, I'm running into the same problem. Don't want to have a second display for my receiver going. I think it affects GPU performance and smoothness. Any creative fixes lately?

I now have an RTX3070, TCL 55R635, and Yamaha RX-A880. If you connect your GPU directly to your display via HDMI, and then connect another HDMI out to an input on your receiver, you can then configure windows 10 to output only gfx to your display, but make the onboard sound on the gfx card go to the rx. It's not really a ghost display since you can switch to it. Can keep mouse from going there by dragging it to the corner of main display. That way I can even use G-Sync or VRR or above 60hz. My Rx doesn't support HDMI 2.1 but neither does my screen. I can do 2560 x 1440 @ 120 hz VRR or 4K 60hz VRR. Not too bad. I guess if everything was completely up to date and brand new I could probably do 4K 120 hz VRR over HDMI as well. But this does work. At times Windows or the Nvidia driver will switch the sound to wrong output but it's not hard to get it working again in the sound control panel. It's a PITA sometimes but better than terrible stereo.

In Metro Exodus even the Atmos is working which sounds really good. 4k doesn't work on Firefox for Netflix and stuff but it does on Edge browser. I have an older CPU though, a core i7 6700K, and I think you need the next gen CPU after this for some 4k encoders to work natively on Windows. It's copy protection BS of course. That's why I usually just switch over the TV apps for streaming, and that is connected back to the same receiver using eARC on a different input for Atmos sound.

 

[elvn]

I had problems related to this for years. I use displayfusion with set app window launch positions and generic window position placements on the fly of whatever the active window is etc.. all tied to stream deck buttons via hotkeys now. Using the "ghost monitor" trick would mess up all of that any time I turned my receiver off (e.g. wanted to use headphones off of a different sound device and turn off the heat producing, power hungry receiver when I wasn't using it for sound) - because when the receiver was off, the "ghost monitor" would drop out of the array. So that method was super annoying and not useful to me with my setup.

Now though, like someone else suggested:

I have a LG 48CX 4k 120hz VRR OLED and I put my gpu directly to that TV via hdmi. I then run the hdmi eARC-OUT from the TV to my receiver, using the receiver like a set of speakers more or less. Since my receiver was slightly older and didn't have an eArc port, I bought a sharc device. Those little powered devices essentially add an earc port to any of the regular hdmi device input ports on your receiver (just don't hook it up to an arc port if you have one on the receiver).

In my case, the image below would have a sharc in between the tv and the receiver. It would also be including 7.1 audio and speakers being eARC not arc but you get the idea.

In this way I have:

GPU out ----> 120hz VRR 4k TV HDMI input...~~> TV HDMI eARC output ---> [sharc hdmi in ... sharc hdmi out] ----> my slightly older onkyo 7.1 receiver's hdmi #2 input I think

I did that from a 1080ti sc hybrid through my 48cx OLED for 3/4 of a year, and now was doing it from a 3090 for awhile. (I've owned the 48CX for almost a year since end of november 2020).

-------------------

As for streaming services I can just run the webOS versions off of the TV's own smart features or use a nvidia shield (or you can use a console, etc). I have a muli monitor setup and dedicate the 48 CX OLED as a media and gaming "stage", so I can still use the other screens as the windows machine's desktop space while doing so.

I do run youtube in a window on the windows desktop regularly though.

 

[Sycraft]

The thing that does suck about the HDMI passthrough or eARC is, of course, needing an HDMI display. Not all displays you want for a computer are HDMI. That was the issue I had back when I did it. The display I use is DisplayPort only for high rez/frequency so that wouldn't work.

Now I've just jettisoned HDMI and RME plus Genelec solve the speaker problem, albeit for quite a high price.

 

[elvn]

4k is high rez and pretty high frequency. Too high really for 120fpsHz solid/minimum at 4k with graphics settings cranked up in most cases outside of very simple to render games and a few corridor shooters. In the near future there will be dual 4k micoOLED VR headsets produced (and with varifocal clear lcd lenses incidentally) and years down the road 8k tvs and monitors so the frame rate crunch is probably not going to change that much even with faster gpu gens and DLSS/ai upscaling. (Foveated rendering might help VR somewhat). The 4k 120hz OLEDs also have really good HDR and DolbyVison HDR.. where most "higher than most game's in 4k can sustain in fps" very high refresh rate gaming LCDs do not.

RME plus Genelec solve the speaker problem,

That's quite the pro audio setup. It probably sounds awesome but sounds like studio monitors in stereo unless I'm reading what you said wrong. For me, I would never ditch surround sound 7.1 - However I get how some people like pristine stereo gear.

I like 7.1 uncompressed hdmi audio formats for movies, though I occasionally use headphones when required. 7.1 surround receiver and speakers at my pc + headphones option that is. I also sometimes listen to whatever atmos music library is available on tidal or sometimes just mirror or surround mix stereo music across the speakers when not using headphones.


There is also surround sound in games:

PC Gaming Surround Sound Round-up (Last updated 9 October 2021)

Below is a list containing PC games, the API or middleware used for their audio processing, the final result of the audio output, and comments. The information here is primarily in regards to the maximum number of speakers a game will output to (up to 7.1) and discovering trends as a side effect, trends like OpenAL games not having LFE output and current Ubisoft games being limited to 5.1 output (as of Watch Dogs).

And a master list of surround titles here
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_surround_sound

(it's a long list)



There is even a small but growing library of dolby atmos surround format PC (and xbox) titles... along with HDR games and DolbyVision games... Some relatively newer or more popular ATMOS ones like cyberpunk, MS Flight Simulator, Fenyx, Devil may cry 5 SE, Forza 4, Metro Exodus, dirt 5, project cars 3, COD:warzone, Overwatch , gears 4 and 5, Borderlands 3, TomClancy-Division 2.. and a handful of older titles like Ori, FF XV and some of the tomb raiders, AC: Origins, and a few others.


https://www.dolby.com/gaming/



https://www.dolby.com/experience/games/

-------------------------------------




Forbes: Dolby Atmos Gaming On Xbox And PC: Which Games Use It, And Why It Matters

Games on Xbox and PC that use Dolby Atmos sound


Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood (Nacon), Xbox + PC


Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red), Xbox + PC


Immortals Fenyx Rising (Ubisoft), Xbox + PC


Call Of Duty Black Ops: Cold War (Activision), Xbox + PC


Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition (Capcom), Xbox + PC


Dirt 5 (Codemasters), Xbox + PC


Inertial Drift (Pqube), Xbox + PC


Project Cars 3 (Namco Bandai), Xbox + PC


Microsoft Flight Simulator (Xbox Game Studios), PC


Grounded (Xbox Game Studios), Xbox + PC


F1 2020 (Codemasters), Xbox + PC


Resident Evil 3 (Capcom), Xbox + PC


Call Of Duty: Warzone (Activision), Xbox + PC


Ori And The Will Of The Wisps (Xbox Game Studios), Xbox + PC


Need For Speed Heat (EA), Xbox + PC


Borderlands 3 (2K Games), Xbox + PC


Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (Activision), Xbox + PC


Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox Game Studios), Xbox + PC


Gears 5 (Xbox Game Studios), Xbox + PC (an article about the use of Dolby Atmos in this title can be found here)


Grid (Codemasters), PC


Metro Exodus (Deep Silver), Xbox + PC


Resident Evil 2 (Capcom), Xbox + PC


Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (Ubisoft), Xbox + PC


Shadow Of The Tomb Raider (Square Enix), Xbox


Zone Of The Enders: The 2nd Runner (Konami), PC


Assassin’s Creed: Origins (Ubisoft), Xbox


For Honor (Ubisoft), Xbox


Super Lucky’s Tale (Microsoft Game Studios), Xbox + PC


Battlefield 1 (Electronic Arts), PC


Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix), Xbox + PC


Gears Of War 4 (Microsoft Studios), Xbox + PC


Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment), PC


Rise Of The Tomb Raider (Microsoft Studios), Xbox


Star Wars: Battlefront (Electronic Arts), PC

...

 

[Sycraft]

That's quite the pro audio setup. It probably sounds awesome but sounds like studio monitors in stereo unless I'm reading what you said wrong. For me, I would never ditch surround sound 7.1 - However I get how some people like pristine stereo gear.

I like 7.1 uncompressed hdmi audio formats for movies, though I occasionally use headphones when required. 7.1 surround receiver and speakers at my pc + headphones option that is. I also sometimes listen to whatever atmos music library is available on tidal or sometimes just mirror or surround mix stereo music across the speakers when not using headphones.

At the moment it is on account of space, but they will do 7.1. RME has good drivers so you can do 7.1 with them just fine.

When I move, that is what I'm going to go for I think. Not cheap, but I still think I might.

 

[Nobu]

Maybe a bit expensive, but you could get an HDMI encoder and run lineout or optical to that and run HDMI from there to the receiver.

 

[Monstieur]

You need HDMI to an AVR only for bitstreaming or Atmos games. For anything else just use analog 7.1 output and run room correction on your PC with Dirac.

 

[elvn]

"only"



No ceiling speakers for me yet but I run everything as bitstream and dolytrueHD/atmos uncompressed 7.1 wherever possible.

 

[Monstieur]

"only"

If you don't have height speakers, you don't need an AVR even for Atmos or bitstreaming. The software renderer in games will render up to 7.1 quite well even with spatial audio. For upmixing stereo content with Dolby Surround, you can capture the impulse responses and use them to upmix on Windows with Equalizer APO.

 

[elvn]

If you don't have height speakers, you don't need an AVR even for Atmos or bitstreaming. The software renderer in games will render up to 7.1 quite well even with spatial audio. For upmixing stereo content with Dolby Surround, you can capture the impulse responses and use them to upmix on Windows with Equalizer APO.

Atmos has 3d sound object positioning so if you were set up for it it opens up a lot more possibilities with travel of one or multiple 3d sound objects at the same time in their individual positioning/pathing (in movies but also in games if done right).

You are right that I don't have ceiling speakers yet (not a fan of the reflect off of the ceiling type). Eventually I'll get a system with 7 + 1 sub + 2 atmos speakers in ceiling but that will probably be for the living room for movies. I think my existing denon (on my living room tv) can do 5.1 + 2 atmos instead of the 7.1 it's setup as now - so I'd probably break the horizontal surround down to 5.1 on the pc and put 2 atmos speakers in the ceiling off of that denon someday. Otherwise It'd be expensive to do it in my pc room at the same time .. 2 atmos ceiling speakers for each room (4) + 2 new atmos surround receivers. My pc gets the hand-me-down receiver whenever I upgrade the living room.

Wherever I can get it I still go for uncompressed native versions and not upmixed or virtual surround emulations (or like what "Surround headphones" do), especially comparing to spdif/optical and other lower bandwidth connectivity. That comes up more for movies. Some, especially older, games actually have issues mapping 5.1 on 7.1 systems to be honest and can require work arounds. There are a number of modern games with native 7.1 audio support though. Atmos games would have no problem obviously so hopefully that trend continues.

In the past I've run spdif/optical and even hdmi arc that can't do uncompressed 5.1/7.1 .. it's not like it's unusable or anything, just a matter of preference like graphics resolution/sound resolution bandwidth wise, and whenever I get around to a true atmos setup it will also be kind of like pancake flatscreen vs "holographic" 3d VR in a way.

 

[Monstieur]

Atmos has 3d sound object positioning so if you were set up for it it opens up a lot more possibilities with travel of one or multiple 3d sound objects at the same time in their individual positioning/pathing (in movies but also in games if done right).

You are right that I don't have ceiling speakers yet (not a fan of the reflect off of the ceiling type). Eventually I'll get a system with 7 + 1 sub + 2 atmos speakers in ceiling but that will probably be for the living room for movies. I think my existing denon (on my living room tv) can do 5.1 + 2 atmos instead of the 7.1 it's setup as now - so I'd probably break the horizontal surround down to 5.1 on the pc and put 2 atmos speakers in the ceiling off of that denon someday. Otherwise It'd be expensive to do it in my pc room at the same time .. 2 atmos ceiling speakers for each room (4) + 2 new atmos surround receivers. My pc gets the hand-me-down receiver whenever I upgrade the living room.

Wherever I can get it I still go for uncompressed native versions and not upmixed or virtual surround emulations (or like what "Surround headphones" do), especially comparing to spdif/optical and other lower bandwidth connectivity. That comes up more for movies. Some, especially older, games actually have issues mapping 5.1 on 7.1 systems to be honest and can require work arounds. There are a number of modern games with native 7.1 audio support though. Atmos games would have no problem obviously so hopefully that trend continues.

In the past I've run spdif/optical and even hdmi arc that can't do uncompressed 5.1/7.1 .. it's not like it's unusable or anything, just a matter of preference like graphics resolution/sound resolution bandwidth wise, and whenever I get around to a true atmos setup it will also be kind of like pancake flatscreen vs "holographic" 3d VR in a way.

The 7.1 base layer in Atmos for games is rendered using the spatial sound engine on Windows whether or not you have height speakers. Even in movies the base layer already contains all the sounds present in the height layer. The AVR uses the object metadata to subtract these sounds from the base layer if you have height channels. The rendering in the base layer does not change in any way on most AVRs when bitstreaming Atmost on a 7.1 layout. The exception are high-end processors from Trinnov which know the exact physical coordinates of each speaker and pan the objects more accurately in both base and height layers. All other AVRs use a fixed 7.1 base layout and mix.

I have a 15.2 combined Auro 3D and Atmos layout for my PC. I use an OLED as my monitor so I can get away with eARC to send both 7.1 PCM and Atmos to the AVR.

The only viable solution right now other than eARC is to use Clone mode with an HDMI 2.1 AVR to run at 4K 120 Hz to avoid the phantom desktop.

 

[elvn]

The 7.1 base layer in Atmos for games is rendered using the spatial sound engine on Windows whether or not you have height speakers. Even in movies the base layer already contains all the sounds present in the height layer. The AVR uses the object metadata to subtract these sounds from the base layer if you have height channels. The rendering in the base layer does not change in any way on most AVRs when bitstreaming Atmost on a 7.1 layout. The exception are high-end processors from Trinnov which know the exact physical coordinates of each speaker and pan the objects more accurately in both base and height layers. All other AVRs use a fixed 7.1 base layout and mix.

I have a 15.2 combined Auro 3D and Atmos layout for my PC. I use an OLED as my monitor so I can get away with eARC to send both 7.1 PCM and Atmos to the AVR.

The only viable solution right now other than eARC is to use Clone mode with an HDMI 2.1 AVR to run at 4K 120 Hz to avoid the phantom desktop.

That sounds like a cool setup. All good interesting info related as always, thanks.

I'm aware that atmos is essentially Dolby TrueHd + atmos channel metadata but overall it ends up being a 3d spatialization and I'm not certain if atmos sound masters have play in how much they extract from the other channels on the fly to shape the sound better for a 3d effect - rather than a pure 1:1 subtraction of a few tracks. I'd be interested to find out how they mix it. Of course the end result would not be as great as the Trinnov you mentioned or full banks of speakers in a movie theater that an object can travel between individually but still a pretty neat 3d sound environment effect.

Of course looking at a flat pancake screen, and in real life for that matter, you are often blind to object but can still hear it's position and travel. So they are mastering positioning the best they can in an attempt to make it sound more realistic. I'm guessing that in a 2D setup emulating travel directly across the center of the room the sound object either has to use the perpendicular speakers on both sides, one side or the other, or teleport from the origin side to the far side (with or without fading on either end). The top channels could help a lot in those scenarios.

There has to be limit to how much they can do so they will always have to resort to mixing and shaping across fewer speakers. Otherwise we'd have to be in a sphere of speakers lol.