Can't Test Full Range of Speakers (HDMI Audio)

Studio XPS 1645
Windows 7
Loaded

I never get the ability to check the box for "Surround Speakers" under Sound Playback Devices / Speaker Setup / Select Full Range Speakers (see attached jpg). I can only check front left/right.

Is this because I do not have surround setup correctly on the PC through the HDMI output or because a surround device is not detected?

That's the question!

The box should be selectable????

There COULD be a box to test LFE and Center channels as well ?????

I have tried this among others at least this with PC HDMI out to the TV in TV speaker mode where the TV surround parameter is set to "S-Force Front Surround" where the TV manual says in S-Force 5.1 audio is accepted.

The speakers are too close. I can't be sure surround is playing or not.

I have been switching between the most recent Realtek and ATI/IDT HDMI audio drivers and the result is the same for each. I've tried 3 different HDMI cables and all 3 HDMI inputs to the TV set. Never can check that box and wonder if my setup is wrong.

 

Bump

Can't anyone at least tell me that they get all just what I get in the test box but do think/do not think they are getting surround? Anyone getting more than I am seeing in that dialog?

 

I think you need a HDCP compliant device for the 5.1 (or 7.1?) Surround Sound to work.
See ATI Mobility GPU™ 3D Graphics Accelerators or ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4600 Series Specs. (Assuming you have the 4670, like me.)

What do you see shown for Supported Formats for the ATI HDMI Output device? (Open Sound in Control Panel > Select the ATI HDMI Output device > click the Properties button > click the Supported Formats tab.) I have attached what this screen looks like for me when connected to my TV. As you can see, I only see stereo as well and HDCP is not supported on my TV.

 

When I connect my 1645 to my Onkyo TX-SR705 7.1 channel receiver, I see all the options pop up like they should.

It's possible that your TV is reporting to the audio card that it doesn't support full range surround speakers.

I don't know why'd you want to set your surround speakers to full range anyway. A full range speaker is one that has multiple drivers (tweeter, mid-range, and woofer), and can handle a full frequency range. If your speakers are under 4.5" in diameter, they're not full-range speakers.

Besides, even in a full-fledged home theater setup, you want to set your surrounds to 'small' anyway. Low bass frequencies are omni-directional, and they sound better coming out of a dedicated subwoofer than out of the surround speakers.

 

To clarify my previous post, selecting 'full-range' for your speakers prevents the bass (below 120Hz) frequencies from being automatically re-directed to the subwoofer channel. That's all it does.

It doesn't make a difference for movies or games using Dolby or DTS surround sound, as all bass frequencies are sent to the low-frequency effects (LFE or subwoofer) channel anyway. Selecting full-range for a speaker will only make a difference when listening to multi-channel music, or when over-riding the Dolby default (if you have a receiver capable of doing so) when you have a full-blown home theater system with quality full-range speakers.

 

WOW! I had never seen that properties box before. But there it is (atttached). How did I miss it? Maybe it appeared over the past two days where I have been carefully re-doing these 'Catalyst' updates to 4670 and updating ATI/Realtek drivers & switching to solve this.

I think I'm back to planet earth! Could my Bravia TV be HDCP compliant but only support 2 channel PCM audio input on the 3 input HDMI inputs? (It appears so in the specs).

Thus 5.1 channel sound is not going to or being passed through the TV to my DVD/Surround 5.1 speaker system (which I didn't mention b4) and my previous ILLUSION that I was getting 5.1 through is because the DVD/Surround surround setting produces an LFE channel if it ain't there - my discovery of last week.

Thanks for looking at this, guys, and the clarifications on the LFE!!!! V. helpful.

 

Codester,

How can an HDTV with HDMI not be HDCP compliant? If it wasn't it wouldn't display video either. Kinda strange.

Paul,

Most TV's won't pass sound through to a receiver (actually I don't know of any that do, though it should be theoretically possible). Home theater equipment is designed so that the receiver is the heart of the system. All devices should connect to the receiver first, then the video should be passed on to the TV. Not everything connected to the TV, then pass audio to the receiver.

When you say DVD/Surround system, do you mean a home theater in-a-box type deal? Those systems are alright for the price, and they're much better than just regular TV speakers, but you get what you pay for. The problem with those systems is that they can't be upgraded. For example, you can't upgrade the DVD player to a Blu-Ray player without tossing out the whole system. They also tend to be lacking on inputs and configuration options. So it's unlikely that you can route an external device, like your 1645, through your receiver to the TV using HDMI.

The most you can hope for is that your receiver has a digital coaxial input. If it does, you could use an adapter like this Amazon.com: S/PDIF Adapter, 3.5mm MONO Plug to RCA Mono Jack:… to connect the headphone out on your laptop to the digital coax input on your receiver. You could get 5.1 surround that way, as long as the game supports Dolby Digital.

 

That's a good question. I just plugged in the HDMI cable in again to take another look and now it's saying HDCP is supported. Very weird. I was playing with Catalyst Control Center a lot last night. Maybe some setting caused it to not be supported at the time, such as using a custom/non-HD resolution or something. Maybe I’ll look into it some more later. Also, from what I understand, just because a device doesn't support HDCP doesn't necessarily mean that it won't display video. It just means that it won't display copy protected content; but if it does, it will be at lower resolution/quality.

 

Yes, but all HD video over HDMI is protected content, regardless if it's from TV or Blu-Ray. It's possible that an HD .avi or .mkv is not protected, but I'm not really sure.

 

Nope :-(

OK. Since I thought this was already being handled for me I thought surround sound was going from the TV (Bravia KLV) to the DVD/Surround system (DAV-DZ750K) via the HDMI connection. But no sound is going via HDMI (that IS correct?). Sound is only going from the TV to the DVD/Surround system through the stereo jacks!

It seems to me that a TV that thought to have 3 HDMI inputs might have thought to 'pass' the surround to the DVD/Surround system somehow. They do also market HD1080 camcorders that record 5.1 surround and one of those HDMI inputs to the TV says "camcorder". Further confusion resulted that there is "HDMI control" which looks 'bidirectional' between the TV and DVD/surround system via the HDMI cable, hmmm.

The S Force surround I mentioned seems to be broadcast, not via HDMI.

There is nothing that looks like dig coax on the TV or DVD/Surround. The DVD/Surround has a DMI input. I use this to play the ipod via bluetooth on the DVD/Surround system. I've seen features for the DMI port that would let you play wirelessly stereo music from your PC. I wonder, without having the time to pursue it until next month, is wirelessly broadcasting surround from the PC possible?

Oh well! So with the XPS1645 Bluray player and my 25' HDMI cable from the den to my TV I now have an almost fully complete Hi Def system with the caveat that I am getting sort of "pseudo" surround from a stereo source, maybe not the exact surround as the Blu-ray author intended it? I won't be holding my own breath for YouTube videos in surround out until I replace the DVD/Surround with BluRay. No prob.