MSI motherboard and HDMI sound

P

pheasant16

Wanted to move desktop to HDTV for Hulu; and 8 year old box wasn't a
candidate.

Bought an MSI NF980-65 because it had an intgrated video with HDMI output.

Built the box, dragged browser from monitor to tv, great picture; no sound.

Have been googling and finding this issue resolved when using Vista or
Win 7 by enablng SPDIF in the sound panel.

Using Win XP. The only audio devices listed are the onboard Realtek,
and the modem. No spdif like what Vista or 7 has.

Looking at the integrated peripherals of the BIOS, there is an Audio
HDMI Select option has HDMI and SPDIF out as options. The current one
is HDMI. Would changing this make it utilize the hdmi cable for the sound?

The sound currently comes out the speakers by the computer monitor, but
want it carried to the tv hopefully over the hdmi cable.

Help.

Thanks

Mark
 
P

Paul

pheasant16 said:
Wanted to move desktop to HDTV for Hulu; and 8 year old box wasn't a
candidate.

Bought an MSI NF980-65 because it had an intgrated video with HDMI output.

Built the box, dragged browser from monitor to tv, great picture; no sound.

Have been googling and finding this issue resolved when using Vista or
Win 7 by enablng SPDIF in the sound panel.

Using Win XP. The only audio devices listed are the onboard Realtek,
and the modem. No spdif like what Vista or 7 has.

Looking at the integrated peripherals of the BIOS, there is an Audio
HDMI Select option has HDMI and SPDIF out as options. The current one
is HDMI. Would changing this make it utilize the hdmi cable for the sound?

The sound currently comes out the speakers by the computer monitor, but
want it carried to the tv hopefully over the hdmi cable.

Help.

Thanks

Mark

This is my theory as to the audio options on MSI NF980-G65.

RealTek ------ Analog_Audio_Plugs
------ SPDIF ("Digital") --- 3_pin_header,adapter plate optional

Nvidia ------ Audio_Over_HDMI

If all your drivers were installed, you'd see two HDaudio devices in
"Sound, video, and game controllers" section of Device Manager.

If you go to Control Panels in WinXP and look for the control panel that
handles "Sound and Audio Devices", under the (middle) Audio tab
you'll see "Sound playback" has more than one option. You'd select
the Nvidia entry in there, to get audio working over HDMI.

Nvidia was using SPDIF passthru on some of their video cards, but
in this case, it looks like the onboard MCP82 Northbridge has an HDAudio codec
already provided, and separate from the RealTek one.

If you look on your motherboard CD, the chipset driver package is
a couple hundred megabytes. The README file isn't that useful, because
it doesn't seem to be listing all the things I can see in the folders
in there.

You don't have to work at the folder level - the Nvidia jumbo driver package
usually has "tick boxes" so you can selectively apply just the driver
components you want. I use the folders, to see what is available.
I can see an "HDAudio" folder, and inside it is a NVHDA.inf file.
That file mentions "NVIDIA HDMI Output" near the bottom of the file, and
it's possible a similar name will appear in Device Manager, once you've
run the overall "setup.exe" and ticked the option to install MCP82 HDMI
audio.

Note - based on what I can see, I'd install the RealTek HDAudio driver
first, because the RealTek package usually has the installer logic
necessary to get the Microsoft UAA driver installed. That adds
hdaudbus.sys to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers and adds a UAA entry
to the "System" section of Device Manager. UAA is needed to make the
Nvidia HDAudio device work, but I don't see a sub-folder with hotfix
support showing in it. And that means installing the RealTek driver
first, such that you end up with a UAA entry in the "System" section of
Device Manager. Once you've verified RealTek (analog) audio is working,
then install the Nvidia HDAudio portion of the jumbo Nvidia installer,
and Nvidia's installation will be able to share the hdaudbus.sys file
the RealTek installer put in the system. (If you're using WinXP SP3,
then it has a copy of UAA built in, and there would be a little less
to worry about. Sometimes the RealTek installer screws up though, but
time will tell whether the installer logic in the RealTek installer
is OK or not.)

After the drivers are all installed, and there are no "yellow marks"
or error codes in Device Manager, you should have the options
shown in the diagram up above. If you select RealTek, you would then
use the RealTek custom panel, to select analog or SPDIF. (SPDIF is useless
without the optional adapter plate, and I don't see a TOSLINK or an RCA
connector in the I/O area of the motherboard.) If you use the
Sound control panel to select Nvidia, then your audio should
start traveling over HDMI.

Just a guess,
Paul
 
P

pheasant16

Paul said:
This is my theory as to the audio options on MSI NF980-G65.

RealTek ------ Analog_Audio_Plugs
------ SPDIF ("Digital") --- 3_pin_header,adapter plate
optional

Nvidia ------ Audio_Over_HDMI

If all your drivers were installed, you'd see two HDaudio devices in
"Sound, video, and game controllers" section of Device Manager.

If you go to Control Panels in WinXP and look for the control panel that
handles "Sound and Audio Devices", under the (middle) Audio tab
you'll see "Sound playback" has more than one option. You'd select
the Nvidia entry in there, to get audio working over HDMI.

Nvidia was using SPDIF passthru on some of their video cards, but
in this case, it looks like the onboard MCP82 Northbridge has an HDAudio
codec
already provided, and separate from the RealTek one.

If you look on your motherboard CD, the chipset driver package is
a couple hundred megabytes. The README file isn't that useful, because
it doesn't seem to be listing all the things I can see in the folders
in there.

You don't have to work at the folder level - the Nvidia jumbo driver
package
usually has "tick boxes" so you can selectively apply just the driver
components you want. I use the folders, to see what is available.
I can see an "HDAudio" folder, and inside it is a NVHDA.inf file.
That file mentions "NVIDIA HDMI Output" near the bottom of the file, and
it's possible a similar name will appear in Device Manager, once you've
run the overall "setup.exe" and ticked the option to install MCP82 HDMI
audio.

Note - based on what I can see, I'd install the RealTek HDAudio driver
first, because the RealTek package usually has the installer logic
necessary to get the Microsoft UAA driver installed. That adds
hdaudbus.sys to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers and adds a UAA entry
to the "System" section of Device Manager. UAA is needed to make the
Nvidia HDAudio device work, but I don't see a sub-folder with hotfix
support showing in it. And that means installing the RealTek driver
first, such that you end up with a UAA entry in the "System" section of
Device Manager. Once you've verified RealTek (analog) audio is working,
then install the Nvidia HDAudio portion of the jumbo Nvidia installer,
and Nvidia's installation will be able to share the hdaudbus.sys file
the RealTek installer put in the system. (If you're using WinXP SP3,
then it has a copy of UAA built in, and there would be a little less
to worry about. Sometimes the RealTek installer screws up though, but
time will tell whether the installer logic in the RealTek installer
is OK or not.)

After the drivers are all installed, and there are no "yellow marks"
or error codes in Device Manager, you should have the options
shown in the diagram up above. If you select RealTek, you would then
use the RealTek custom panel, to select analog or SPDIF. (SPDIF is useless
without the optional adapter plate, and I don't see a TOSLINK or an RCA
connector in the I/O area of the motherboard.) If you use the
Sound control panel to select Nvidia, then your audio should
start traveling over HDMI.

Just a guess,
Paul

Thanks Paul

I installed the nVidia driver, the uaa driver shows up. Nothing in the
sounds panel yet, so tonight when I get home will hook up the HDMI cable
to see if it finds the Nvidia device and troubleshoot from there.

Mark
 

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