GT-70 ONC 5.1 Audio via HDMI port

Hi there,

Has anyone been able to get any kind of 5.1 audio working via the HDMI connection?

I plug the HDMI connection into my audio receiver however it only gives me the option of 2 channel stereo. I suspect this maybe windows detecting the receiver setup incorrectly. All audio plays as stereo. The realtek audio card doesn't appear to detect the HDMI port at all. My assumption being that the HDMI port is connected to the motherboard and "driven" by the intel display driver.

I have attempted to "bitstream" audio out via HDMI (which should just send the audio to the receiver and ignore whatever windows dectects)- but this still doesn't seem to work.

Is it even possible to put this kind of audio out via HDMI on the GT70? Or is it limited due to the fact it's via the intel driver and not the Realtek?

Thanks in advance.

 

Have you gone through the HDMI audio options in the sound panel? Can you post some screenshots of the settings?

 

Mine works, you need to go to Control Panel> Sound and configure the HDMI speaker settings instead of Realtek HD Audio:

 

Okay that is quite helpful - so it is possible. Here is a capture of my sound setup:



My receiver is an Onkyo which gets detected by windows as a 2 channel device (TX-SR605). I read somewhere this is because windows is picking up the speakers on the TV that the receiver is attached to. I guess I will focus on trying to get windows to pick this up as 5.1 device.

I had thought that by bitsreaming out to the receiver it would ignore the speaker setup and just let the receiver do all the work.

Thanks heaps.

 

I am not sure, Windows shouldn't picking up the speakers on the TV if your laptop is connect to your Onkyo receiver with HDMI. Your TV should only gets input signal if HDMI is connected and it doesn't output signal to your receiver and to PC tells Windows it has 2 speakers.

It's most likely your Onkyo receiver is set to Stereo instead of 5.1 surround.

My Bose receiver also has such settings to change from 2 Speakers or Surround 5.1.

 

How are you connected to your TV? I think certain output sources take priority, so that could be a viable speculation.

 

I'm connected:

1. Laptop via hdmi to 1st hdmi port on Receiver
2. Second hdmi port on receiver to TV

What's interesting is that my receiver has an "HDMI Monitor" yes/no setting. This is supposed to be set to "yes" if you are using the hdmi pass video to a TV. If it's set to no then no image is passed onto the TV however, Windows then allows me to set 5.1 as the speaker setup. Unfortunately that means I can't see anything via the TV! That's what makes me think it's windows detecting the TV speakers.

 

I believe second HDMI port is not suppose to go to your TV, the 2nd HDMI port is for another device such as a blu-ray player or game console or whatever device using HDMI, so you can switch between HDMI 1 for your laptop and HDMI 2 for let's say XBox 360.

There should be a port mark HDMI Out and that's the one that suppose to go to your TV.

 

Yes this crossed my mind when I was re-reading the manual to find out what the monitor setting was for.... Will check this out! Away at the moment so will check in a few days when I get back home and let you know. Thanks for the help

 

I have resolved this issue! Just in case anybody else was experiencing this problem, I will quickly post the answer.

It was nothing to do with my laptop. It was caused by my AV receiver passing audio via the "HDMI OUT" connection. This caused windows to detect the stereo only speakers on my TV and thus only give me 2 channel stereo as an option.The receiver (Onkyo TX-SR605) had an "HDMI Audio Out" setting which I disabled. After this, windows correctly detected the receivers audio options and i was allowed to select 5.1, 7.1 etc etc.

Cheers!

 

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the follow up, DaddyJ!