Hi All I have been trying to get 5.1 surround sound out of my HD5850 HDMI for some time now and it seems it can only output in stereo. Is there anyway to change this as I feel I am greatly missing out on the audio I should be getting.
When you play a DVD or an audio source that is already dolby digital / Dolby DTS encoded do you get the 5.1 audio? For games and applications you need to have the audio stream encoded to DTS on the fly, otherwise you will get only stereo audio out. Although I have a ATI 5xxx series gfx card I do not see any sound options that would enable on the fly DTS encoding. You may need to use a dedicated sound card for this, then connect it up to the ATI gfx card spidif input for it to pass the signal to the HDMI output.
I've had this before, the only way I could get it work is by going into the settings and activating the sound affects. Seems a daft way of doing it, but thats the only way I could go 5:1.
@ Delphium, I apologize i didnt specify the loop ive got going at the moment. My computer goes into my TV via HDMI and my TV connects to my 5.1 DTS compatible phillips home theatre system via optical out. My amp can support 5.1 but the option for it on the computer i.e. in audio settings and configure speakers only offers me stereo. another issue is that it takes the audio a second to get through the speakers which really stops sharp intros dead.
In that situation does the amp have another digital input? If so, use the onboard sound digital out and go direct to the speakers, you may find it will reduce your audio lag too.
how I got 5.1 audio out .... geoboy333, I have an HP laptop dv7-2177cl, and recently got a 46" Sony Bravia and 5.1 Sony Surround Speaker System and discovered a problem similiar to yours...I couldn't my computer to out more than 2 channels for dvd or blu-ray play through its HDMI cable. Well hopefully someone will read this and save themselves the several hours it took me to get it all figured out. There are actually two issues to get 5.1 channels out to your system first and most important is the driver, second is the player program. I had the same ATI HDMI output driver. if you click properties on this and click the second tab...it will say max channels: 2. Thats right my "entertainment laptop" came with a crappy driver that didn't support 5.1 channels. After about an hour, I found this link for a realtek driver(R2.49): http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false Not only was this driver teriffic, but it had far more features and options in the properties section than my original ATI driver and when I clicked on the Configure Speakers, I was able to select 5.1 channels and it output just fine. Be sure to set a restore point and or backup your OS before you do this though, just in case...I didn't bother but I figured I'd type this here anyways so nobody bawls me out if they screw up their system. SECOND!! ....Once you get your driver figured out, then you need to make sure the DVD/Blu-Ray players you're using supports 5.1 channels as well....not all of them do. My HP laptop came with several DVD players. Cyberlink, Intervideo Silver, HP Mediasmart DVD, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center....out of all those players only two seem to support more than 2 channels once you get your driver working....HP mediasmart DVD and Windows Media Center. Windows Media Player is basically just too dumb to support anything as fancy as 5.1 channels and cyberlink and intervideo will gladly do 5.1 channels after you've forked out some dough.....which depending on your computer and what's installed ...you just might have to pay to get a decent DVD player program that includes 5.1 channels. For addtional driver info, I also found this link after I did all this....http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=110508 which linked to this updated ATI driver which was also supposed to support 5.1....http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/pages/hdmi_xp.aspx?〈=English but I didn't try this since I already got it working with the Realtek driver and I'm happy to let sleeping dogs lie. I hope this helps, again first get an HDMI audio driver that supports 5.1 channels and then get a DVD/Blu-Ray player program that does the same. Thats what I did so I could finally enjoy the full potential of my A/V equipment. For all this hell, I blame ATI /AMD and HP for including a crappy driver with their hardware in the first place. If a computer comes with a Blu-Ray player and HDMI output, its a given you'll want to hook it up to your home theater so they should've included a fully optioned driver in the first place.
I had the same problem when setting my friends HP Pavilion dv7 laptop through ATI HDMI output. His laptop plays his blue ray discs through CyberLink PowerDVD. I attempted to get it to add 5.1 in the sound settings on the laptop but couldn't get it to work. Downloading the codec down below did add some additions tabs and options in the properties area though. I did get 5.1 to be read by my receiver easily by going into the settings when in CyberLink PowerDVD. Go to the audio tab on the left. For speaker environment select use HDMI and for the output mode, select the non-decoded dolby digital/DTS audio to external device. When I switched this from the PCM setting my receiver immediately switched over to 5.1 instead of 2 channel. Problem solved for playing blue rays through HDMI to receiver. Even when I swithed these settings it doesn't change anything in the computers sound settings (realtek HDMI output). http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false
