No 5.1 speaker config

[kcirevam]

Hello, first of all thanks for any help that you can provide.

I am running a rig with a ati radeon hd 4800 that is connected to a sony str-dh820 via an hdmi cable, than its sent through another hdmi cable to a 46 inch sharp aquas. my operating system is windows 7 64 bit.

the problem is when i go to the speaker setup page in the playback devices it only says that a stereo setup is available. i would like to be able to have this work in 5.1.

thanks again

 

[fireberd]

Exactly what vendor ATI Radeon HD4800 do you have? There are several video card manufacturers that made this card.

Actually, go to the vendor site for the card and see if that card is supposed to have 5.1. Many Video cards only output two channel stereo.

 

[kcirevam]

sapphire

 

[kcirevam]

the sapphire webs site says this


"Dolby® TrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio™ Support
Support for copy protected, high bandwidth, 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI. Get a fully immersive, high definition audio experience with the latest Blu-ray movies. (Requires a DVI to HDMI dongle on some models, an HD capable monitor and a Blu-ray drive)"


my card includes the hdmi port

 

[carwiz]

Your Sony amp should show up as a device and have drivers. You need to select the Sony as the default output from the PC.

 

[kcirevam]

you could be right, however i don't understand how a how a remote speaker system should have drivers

also sonys site doesn't list any

 

[fireberd]

I have a Sapphire HD4850. The Sapphire site does not list an HD4800 (that I could find), just several different models of the HD4850 and HD4890. Exactly what model video card do you have. A google search just shows up HD4800 "Series" video cards.

I've never used the HDMI port on my HD4850 so I can't say for sure exactly how it works, but some PC output is only Stereo unless you have a video, for example, that does generate multi-channel audio.

Do you have the latest drivers for this card? If not go to www.ati.com and download the latest drivers (including the Catalyst Control Center) and then see if that helps.

The Sony would not have anything to do with the PC, it's not attached as the "Sound Card".

 

[kcirevam]

i have tried updating the drivers however its really weird when i install them it doesn't ask to restart. also the date of release in the properties doesn't change even though that on the ati website says they were released 11/15/2011

 

[stormy13]

When you downloasded the driver from AMD, did you download the individual driver and CCC or the full Catalyst Suite? Reason for asking is that from that screen shot of your playback devices you don't have the AMD HDMI Audio driver installed, it is just running on the default Windows driver.

The audio driver is included in the full suite, but is not part of the driver only download.

@fireberd, it doesn't matter which 4800 series card he has (or any AMD card for that matter), as they all get the HDMI driver when you install the full Catalyst suite. Also they all have Realtek on them for the HDMI audio (no idea which Realtek chip it actually is). You can also get the audio driver directly from Realtek (ir under their high definition audio section),

Realtek

and they have the latest standalone version that is included in the full Catalyst suite.

 

[kcirevam]

i just installed the whole suite right now, again. i had removed the drivers trying to see if re-installing might help
however i am still haveing the same problem

 

[fireberd]

What is shown when you Click the "Configure" button for the HDMI? Are you given speaker options?

I can't check mine as I don't have an HDMI plugged in, or any close device I could connect the HDMI to.

 

[kcirevam]

this is what it shows, it should have the 5.1 or even 7.1 option

 

[kcirevam]

also i noticed in this part of the speaker setup it shows max speakers two and no compression options.

 

[fireberd]

Well that explains why there is no 5.1 sound. But, I don't have any info on what is in your video card. You can try the RealTek driver from the link and see if that will install and work. Before you install the driver, set a System Restore point so you can use System Restore to fall back in case it corrupts something.

Ultimately it may take a different video card that does have the wanted 5.1 surround sound.

 

[kcirevam]

yeah those drivers didn't work. no idea.....

 

[Wordsworth]

Others have had this problem and only two appear to have resolved it, but by doing what you've already done, one, two, that is re-installing the graphic driver. Unfortunately I don't have an HDMI cable to experiment on my end.

Edit: In your BIOS, do you have the SPDIF Mode Setting set to HDMI rather than SPDIF output?

 

[fireberd]

There is nothing in the BIOS on my Intel motherboard for any HDMI options.
I have S/PDIF enabled, but that has nothing to do with my HD4850 video card's audio as the HD4850 has it's own sound device built on the Video card.

There are some video cards that require an S/PDIF connection to the PC for HDMI sound, but I don't think any of the HD 4800 series requires this.

 

[Wordsworth]

I'm speaking only to kcirevam as the OP appears to have the same motherboard as I, an Asus P6T which does have the HDMI option in the BIOS. Indeed, in the BIOS at the option it says if you are using a graphics card in this manner for output then the HDMI option must be selected.

 

[carwiz]

Does the driver set you installed for your card have the Dolby encoding drivers? I think the HDMI output will be "stereo" and it's up to the amp to decode the Dolby compression and output 5.1 sound. Your snapshot shows two channels but this doesn't necessarily mean two speakers. HDMI uses two channels for audio. The Dolby compression used on the PC side must match the Dolby decompression capabilities on the amp side.

Edit:
I should have said the sound standard for compression used on the PC side must match the amp. Whether you use Dolby or not really doesn't matter.

 

[kcirevam]

ok so my bios did have it set to spdif, so i changed it to hdmi. however, it did not help. as to weather or not the drivers have dolby encoding drivers i am not sure. i installed the catalyst drivers and i am assuming that they would. is there a way to download them seperatly?