Help, odd sound issue

[jtr1888]

setup Win 7 64 bit, HDMI out from Radeon HD6950 2GB GPU for sound & video to Onkyo 606 full HD supported amp

ok here is issues

when playing movies, I get full surround sound whether DD or DTS etc.. (inc HD audio) if I play games, Im only getting sound from fronts, I have found the problem but not the solution

When movies, all is passthru so amp does decoding

When games, there is no option for passthru so pc decodes & sends sound to amp (I presume)

What is confusing, is if I go to playback devices, select HDMI AMD Device, configure speakers to 5.1, when I do the test, the ping pong sounds that should be for rears, come out the fronts insead

Any ideas why & how to remedy ?

Thanks

 

[MagicPants]

I don't know much about HDMI sound or Radeons for that matter, but it sounds like you need to set something to encode the sound.

Movies are already surround sound encoded so it just passes on through, but for games you need to convert the data into something your receiver can use.

You could try using the multichannel input on your receiver (marked DVD), if you had multichannel output on your card...

 

[scout_03]

look if the game you play have setting for 5.1 sound output, reverse front speaker connector to rear speaker and retry sound test

 

[jtr1888]

sorry Scout, just doesnt make sense with HDMI,

Magic, ur bloody Magic my friend. I put HDMI to the proper multichannel socket (dvd) on amp & all worked great, virtual pint for u my friend, cheers

 

[gamerk316]

...Driver issue? The 6000 series is perfectly capable of sending 8 channel audio via HDMI. The fact the speaker test isn't working right kinda points to drivers.

As a quick test, do a 7.1 sound test, and check to see if the side speakers are getting mapped to the rears, and vica versa. On PC audio spec, the side and rear speakers are the reverse of what they are in Dolby/DTS spec, so its possible your amp is getting confused and mapping uncompressed audio signals incorrectly.

 

[jtr1888]

7.1 still came thru fronts, all ok with multichannel dvd input tho. I did all the driver tests too

 

[gamerk316]

Odd indeed. Problem is, is its hard to test if its GPU side, or receiver side...

 

[jtr1888]

only thing I can think of is reciever had a funny 5 minutes & worked when it wasnt supposed to, all other settings have remained the same, but had this runnig a few hours now & touch wood, all is fine, figers crossed it remains that way ?

 

[jtr1888]

arghhhhhhh there, its gone, no bloody surround sound again & ive done nothing Grrrrrrrrr

 

[MagicPants]

The HDMI wikipedia page says it supports 8 channels of uncompressed audio. So encoding shouldn't be an issue (but there's a big difference between shouldn't and isn't).

What about DRM? Isn't HDMI supposed to default to 2 channel sound if it's missing some sort of DRM flag?