Acer Aspire 7740 5.1 audio problem

I have a recently acquired Windows 7 based 7740-6656, which I'm trying to integrate into my home theater system. I have a Denon AVR3808-CI going to a Mitsubishi WS-55813 TV. There is a DVD player connected to the receiver through an HDMI cable and the 5.1 sound system works perfectly. But then I connected the laptop through an HDMI cable to the receiver and tried playing test sounds from the Intel Audio playback device. When the test sounds are supposedly going through the rear speakers, the audio comes out of the front speakers. What am I doing wrong?

 

Not everybody at once please, there is time for everyone to have the chance to submit their answer.

 

Please stow the attitude. We're here to help, but we may take time to get to your question.

OK, there are a few possibilities here, and it depends on what you're trying to play over the HDMI cable.
I'm only working on experience with S/PDIF, so I'm hoping the two are similar-ish in Windows 7.

If it's a Dolby, DTS, or multi-channel PCM track, your media player isn't being set up correctly to bitstream the track to your receiver. You'll need to look up what the necessary steps are for that.

If you can't set your media player to bitstream the Dolby/DTS/PCM track, or if your 5.1 source isn't one of these codecs, you'll need to enable Dolby Digital Live in your HDMI Output settings. The thing is, Windows 7 for some reason is limited to stereo digital sound over HDMI, so what Dolby Digital Live does is encode your audio to a 5.1 Dolby stream in realtime; a Dolby stream which your receiver should be able to handle.
Right-click your Volume icon, and pick Playback devices. Highlight the HDMI Output option, and click Properties. Tab over to Advanced, and pick Dolby Digital Live 5.1 from the Default Format drop-down window; give it a test.

If all else fails, try the Configure option from the Playback devices option; maybe Windows isn't detecting something right.

 

My media player? did you read my post? I am playing test sounds from the Playback devices properties.

 

Yes, and those sounds aren't being encoded in Dolby, DTS, or any other surround sound format that your receiver understands: they're being transmitted in stereo.
You need to enable Dolby Digital Live in order to get 5.1 playback of regular computer sounds - I mentioned that in the second paragraph of my post.

 

I don't know what you're looking at but in the Advanced tab of the HDMI properties there's only the sample rate and bit depth settings, and nowhere in there is there a Dolby Digital Live 5.1 option.

 

Hmph. I guess Acer didn't include that functionality in its drivers for the Core i5's HDMI output. That is unfortunate. Sorry!

Have you tried to play any surround sound movies? You should still be able to bitstream the Dolby and DTS streams to your receiver over HDMI.

 

Ok, I'm going to try that, thanks.

 

One thing I've noticed when I had my hp dv9000 laptop was when I was using vista I needed to go into the sound settings and change the output to spdif when using hdmi or with the hdmi part if there is a option for the device set it as default and it should work.

 

Well as it turns out, the problem area wasn't the laptop. I tried a different laptop and it wouldn't play 5.1 on that setup either. Then I tried a different input in the receiver and it worked! next I tried to duplicate the settings in the input that worked into the input I wanted to use (of course nowhere in the guide does it tell you how to set individual audio settings for each input) and after figuring out how to do that, now it works just fine.

 

Glad to hear you were able to get everything working again.