Splitting the sound from HDMI

I just bought a Viewsonic monitor with 1080 HD and although the video is excellent but the sound is awful. It appears as though the HDMI is taking ownership of the sound and transmitting it to the rinky dink speakers embedded in the monitor. I would like to use the regular desktop speakers I have always used that worked well but as long as the HDMI is plugged in they do not work. When I changed the connection to the monitor to VGA, the speakers work again but I lose the HD quality on the video. Is there anyway to use the old speakers for sound and HDMI for video. I surely hope there is or else I will feel as though I have lost my money on this monitor!

Thank you in advanced!

keredd, welcome to the Seven Forums.

I guessing from your specs that you are using the onboard video, seeing as you didn't list a video card. If that is the case (or it is an AMD card), the onboard video has its own audio built in for audio over HDMI in addition to the regular onboard audio. When you open the Windows playback properties does it look something like this,



In your case it should show the same ATI HDMI audio as well as the Realtek onboard. If it isn't showing the Realtek then that would be why you can't select your speakers when the HDMI is connected, and you need to install the driver for it. You can find the latest Realtek driver here,

Latest Realtek HD Audio Driver Version

Once installed then it is just a matter of setting it as the default playback device.

Thank you so much for you help! You pointed me in the right direction. I looked at the list of playback devices and the on board playback device was present and green as was the HDMI playback device but this had a green check mark by it. What I did to resolve the issue was "disable" the HDMI playback device and left the alternate driver device that came with the monitor as the default (check attached screenshot) sound device and "enabled" it. As soon as I did this, PRESTO, I got sound.

Thanks again!