Sound troubles on HTPC

[Phobia]

Hello all. I've been having problems setting up audio on my htpc. I have the xfx 4350 with a q6600 and asus p5kpl-cm. Its got vista ultimate 64 bit as the OS. I want to play sound through the dvi port of the 4350 to my tv via dvi-hdmi adapter.
My other htpc has a 3650 in it, and the audio works fine. I'm using the same dvi-hdmi cable for now too. In control panel, I went to sounds, and enabled "Digital Output Device (HDMI)" as my default sound playback, as this is what everyone on google has told me. I do not know what else to do, i've put it to spdif interface as well, and still nothing. Now, the card doesn't have the spdif plugged in, as my 3650 didn't need one, so I assumed that this newer card wouldn't as well. And, I may or may not have lost that spdif cable . Any ideas on what I have done wrong?

[Babrbarossa]

Enabling sound on hd 4XXX

The ATI Proprietary DVI-HDMI Adapter

Enabling HDMI audio in a Radeon HD 4xxx card is a bit confusing. First you have to use the ATI proprietary DVI-HDMI adapter (unless your card has a native HDMI connector). Otherwise you won't get audio through HDMI. The adapter is sometimes bundled with the card. If your card does not come with the adapter, you have to buy it.




Download and Install "ATI HDMI Audio Device" Driver

You will need to install not only ATI Radeon Video Card Driver, but also ATI HDMI Audio Device driver.

- If you are a Windows XP user, then download the ATI HDMI Audio Driver from the AMD website.
- If you are a Windows Vista/7 user, then download the ATI HDMI Audio Driver from the Realtek website.

(Why Realtek? A reasonable guess is that ATI lacks proper audio technology and ATI relies on Realtek for the whole audio part of the GPU.)

Configure the Sound Dialog Box

After you installed the driver, you have to enable the ATI HDMI audio device in the Sound dialog box. Here are some screenshots of the dialog box. First you have to select the correct playback device: Realtek HDMI Output. (The motherboard was GA-E7AUM-DS2H GeForce 9400 mGPU, so you can see "NVIDIA HDMI Output" too [disabled because an NVIDIA GPU can't work simultaneously with an ATI card under Vista].)




Click the "Configure" button and open "Speaker Setup". Then select the correct speaker setting.



Click the "Properties" button and click the "Supported Formats" tab, where you can select supported formats. Click the Test button and select all the supported formats.



In the "Advanced" tab, select the sample rate and bit depth. Vista Audio Engine will downsample/upsample audio to that sample rate/bit depth. So you should choose the highest rate/depth here.



Configure PowerDVD/TotalMedia Theater

PowerDVD 8 Ultra

DD/DTS pass-through:

- Speaker environment > Use HDMI
- Output mode > AC3/DTS pass-through

Multichannel PCM (including the one decoded from HD audio codecs/DD/DTS):

- Speaker environment > Use HDMI
- Output mode > PCM output

or

- Speaker environment > 6 speaker (or 8 speaker)
- Output mode > No effect (or whatever effect you like)

TotalMedia Theater

DD/DTS pass-through:

- Audio Output Mode > S/PDIF

Multichannel PCM (including the one decoded from HD audio codecs/DD/DTS)

- Audio Output Mode > 5.1 Channels (or 7.1 Channels)

Managing 5.1 Channel Sources with 7.1 Channel Speakers

Suppose that you use a 7.1 speaker system and select "7.1 Surround" in the Sound dialog box. This is fine as long as you play 7.1 audio sources. Howerver, when you play a 5.1 audio source, there will be no side or rear (depending on your player) surround sounds and you can't upconvert 5.1 to 7.1 using, for example, Dolby Pro Logic IIx, in your receiver (as the receiver gets mute signals for the side or rear surround speakers).

A workaround is switch between "7.1 Surround" and "5.1 Surround" according to the numbe of channels in the audio source and then upconvert 5.1 to 7.1 in your receiver for a 5.1 source. This can be done by hotkeys.

Another easier workaround is use Dolby Pro Logic IIx built in PowerDVD (the picture below)

[Phobia]

Awsome, thanks a lot. man, the 4xxx series are a PITA compared to 3 series. I'll have to run to ncix to get the hdmi adapter, but thanks again!