XP Sound

O

OldGuy

Dual boot system: Win 7 , Win XP
HDMI from desktop to monitor.
Win 7 sound is great. Watched a movie.

Win XP seems all OK except no sound.
How do I get WinXP to use the HDMI audio to the monitor speakers?
 
H

Hot-Text

OldGuy said:
Dual boot system: Win 7 , Win XP
HDMI from desktop to monitor.
Win 7 sound is great. Watched a movie.

Win XP seems all OK except no sound.
How do I get WinXP to use the HDMI audio to the monitor speakers?


By Installing HDMI
Monitor Drives for XP
 
V

VanguardLH

OldGuy said:
Dual boot system: Win 7 , Win XP
HDMI from desktop to monitor.
Win 7 sound is great. Watched a movie.

Win XP seems all OK except no sound.
How do I get WinXP to use the HDMI audio to the monitor speakers?

You need to install the HDMI driver from the video card maker's web
site. Through the driver is how they route the sound source through
data bus (card slot) to the video card using software. If the video
card maker doesn't provide an XP driver for that model of video card
then you're SOL.

Not all HDMI cards rely on software. Some require you run a cable from
a sound port on the motherboard to the video card. Rather than use
software to redirect sound via the data bus to the video card, they use
a direct hardware connection. That's how I first had Windows XP setup
with an older AMD video card (too long ago to remember the model
number). Later, with a newer AMD video card (HD7870), I could not find
a port on the video card to run a cable from the same motherboard. So I
had to use their HDMI driver (which comes with the Catalyst driver &
software bundle). I actually would've preferred the hardware cable
hookup but apparently AMD figured that was too complicated for most of
their customers and switched to using software (that is normally
opted-in when doing the Catalyst bundle install).

Don't know what you must do to get HDMI from the sound chip on the mobo
to the video card so it can send out the audio signal via its HDMI port
to the HDMI-capable monitor (whose speakers are always crappy so why
bother and just use DVS and the sound outputs on the computer's
backpanel to a set of real speakers). You don't specify the make and
model of motherboard. You don't specify make and model of video card
(if not using the onboard video but instead a video daughtercard). You
didn't specify the make and model of monitor. It's all vague, no
details, and you want someone to diagnose the problem with no
information.
 
O

OldGuy

OldGuy submitted this idea :
Dual boot system: Win 7 , Win XP
HDMI from desktop to monitor.
Win 7 sound is great. Watched a movie.

Win XP seems all OK except no sound.
How do I get WinXP to use the HDMI audio to the monitor speakers?

Fixed it but ...
The correct drivers must have already been there, but the Win Sound
options did not talk about anything relevant to HDMI.
I have those little pastel colored round connectors on the front and
back panels and i was offered only those choices.
So I fiddled around finally selecting the rear little round connectors
and then I had sound through the HDMI cable. Who woulda thought.
 
P

Paul

OldGuy said:
OldGuy submitted this idea :

Fixed it but ...
The correct drivers must have already been there, but the Win Sound
options did not talk about anything relevant to HDMI.
I have those little pastel colored round connectors on the front and
back panels and i was offered only those choices.
So I fiddled around finally selecting the rear little round connectors
and then I had sound through the HDMI cable. Who woulda thought.

As Vanguard was saying, some older video cards use the passthru
cable method, rather than having a "sound chip" on the video card
itself.

The passthru cable is S/PDIF format, and connects to the top of the
video card. On the motherboard side, it would be the four pin
header. Since motherboard makers are "afraid" of doing full S'PDIF
I/O, but are happy to do just the output function, and the four
pin header can do that. AFAIK, the version of S/PDIF on the motherboard,
is single ended TTL, and not a low amplitude transformer-drive
friendly signal. The motherboard header typically goes to some
sort of conversion circuit (slot plate interface, I have one).
In the case of the video card passthru, the video card is only
too happy to use the digital signal level on the four pin header.
(You cannot take the four pin header directly to your Marantz receiver.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/PDIF

Lots of motherboards don't have the S/PDIF four pin header, and then
the video card passthru method is not an option. No HDMI sound for you...
Until you buy a later video card, that is.

Selecting a round dot in the custom sound control panel, routes
sound samples to S'PDIF at 6Mbit/sec, and from there the GPU
converts the digital stream, into stuff that HDMI can use. So
some motherboard sound chips, have both analog round dots (green
for Line Out), but they also have a selector for the S/PDIF dot.
And then up through the passthru cable, to the top of the video card.

*******

If your video card has the sound chip, then go to the bar at the
bottom of your WinXP screen. Look for the round speaker icon.
Right click. Select "Adjust Audio Properties". Go to "Audio"
tab. Look at Sound Playback pulldown menu. If your motherboard
has sound and the video card has sound, the pulldown menu will
have two items. Selecting the video card HDMI from there,
should route sound playback, to the HDMI display speakers.

*******

A short history of HDMI sound:

1) Passthru cable. Typically an NVidia feature. ATI might have been later.
Use custom sound control panel for onboard sound, to route sound samples
to the video card.

2) Onboard sound on video card. ATI may have been first. In this generation,
a RealTek! driver was used, implying the sound generation hardware was
purchased as an IP block from RealTek. And this is in line with the ATI
philosophy of "buy rather than build". They don't want to train up a
team to write audio drivers, on the first day. So for a while, if you
looked into the driver issue, the driver had RealTek branding.

3) Finally, all companies running on all cylinders. All video cards have
HDMI sound (should at least do some number of LPCM channels for free).
The video card driver has an own-branded driver of some sort
(no matter who really wrote it). So it now gives the appearances of
a properly done job.

For (2) and (3), the Sound and Audio Device Properties, is where you
select either onboard analog or video card HDMI sound. If you have
multiple other audio cards in PCI or PCI Express slots, they could
be listed in the menu too.

Paul
 
O

OldGuy

Thanks Paul.
You are as always a fountain of useful help and information.
Glad you are here.
 
P

Paul

OldGuy said:
Thanks Paul.
You are as always a fountain of useful help and information.
Glad you are here.

I'm writing a book one page at a time.
I just haven't figured out what the title or subject will be :)

Paul
 

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