# Anyone know of a Sound card with HDMI HD audio output (like atmos, dts master etc)



## f00zz

Anyone know of a sound card with HDMI output for HD audio? Audio streams like atmos, dts master etc?
And yes I know I can use the HDMI output of my video card for this, but I want a separate output stream for it. Since I use a 4k hdr monitor and it doesn't have speakers and also doesn't have ARC, I need another solution. I have HD audio denon receiver and speakers, currently using optical out.
I know, i can use another HDMI output on my video card to the receiver, but the problem is, if the video card doesn't detect a monitor it won't output sound. Seems like some limitation of HDMI where it won't put sound unless it can also put video, which is stupid.
Another issue is if i turn on the receiver so it acts as a passthrough for a monitor, the hdmi will work but then it sees it as a monitor and puts a display on it, and then of course it doesn't work with DRM because it doesn't see the hardware encryption stuff and I can't watch any copyright material or netflix etc unless i unplug it.

So the solution is, a sound card with hdmi sound output, but i can't find one anywhere. Or a device that will trick the hdmi into thinking it's connected to a display when it isn't (although this sucks because then my computer acts like it has 2 displays and then things disappear to the 2nd non existant display like it does if i make my receiver do it)

So best solution will be sound card like i have now soundblaster but instead of optical out it has hdmi out. Currently using DTS connect w/ spdif optical out which works fine but the sound quality is not nearly as good as the uncompressed hd audio streams from newer tech.

Thanks


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## UltraMega

f00zz said:


> Anyone know of a sound card with HDMI output for HD audio? Audio streams like atmos, dts master etc?
> And yes I know I can use the HDMI output of my video card for this, but I want a separate output stream for it. Since I use a 4k hdr monitor and it doesn't have speakers and also doesn't have ARC, I need another solution. I have HD audio denon receiver and speakers, currently using optical out.
> I know, i can use another HDMI output on my video card to the receiver, but the problem is, if the video card doesn't detect a monitor it won't output sound. Seems like some limitation of HDMI where it won't put sound unless it can also put video, which is stupid.
> Another issue is if i turn on the receiver so it acts as a passthrough for a monitor, the hdmi will work but then it sees it as a monitor and puts a display on it, and then of course it doesn't work with DRM because it doesn't see the hardware encryption stuff and I can't watch any copyright material or netflix etc unless i unplug it.
> 
> So the solution is, a sound card with hdmi sound output, but i can't find one anywhere. Or a device that will trick the hdmi into thinking it's connected to a display when it isn't (although this sucks because then my computer acts like it has 2 displays and then things disappear to the 2nd non existant display like it does if i make my receiver do it)
> 
> So best solution will be sound card like i have now soundblaster but instead of optical out it has hdmi out. Currently using DTS connect w/ spdif optical out which works fine but the sound quality is not nearly as good as the uncompressed hd audio streams from newer tech.
> 
> Thanks


Amazon.com: avedio links HDMI Splitter 1 in 2 Out, 4K HDMI Splitter for Dual Monitors Duplicate/Mirror Only, 1x2 HDMI Splitter 1 to 2 Amplifier for Full HD 1080P 3D with HDMI Cable (1 Source onto 2 Displays): Clothing


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## f00zz

Can't be something like that has to be dedicated, GSYNC won't work over it, I also use displayport for the monitor. When connecting 2 monitors like my normal monitor plus AVR windows always goes into dual monitor mode and all sorts of stuff stops wokring right like gsync , and firing up games sometimes they pick the wrong monitor, it's just really annoying. 
I need hdmi sound output only somehow and haven't found anything that can do it. Or a way to disable 2nd monitor in windows but keep sound output (when i disable video it also disables sound).. so frustrating


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## UltraMega

f00zz said:


> Can't be something like that has to be dedicated, GSYNC won't work over it, I also use displayport for the monitor. When connecting 2 monitors like my normal monitor plus AVR windows always goes into dual monitor mode and all sorts of stuff stops wokring right like gsync , and firing up games sometimes they pick the wrong monitor, it's just really annoying.
> I need hdmi sound output only somehow and haven't found anything that can do it. Or a way to disable 2nd monitor in windows but keep sound output (when i disable video it also disables sound).. so frustrating


Hmm well your use case is pretty specific. To my knowledge there are no HDMI sound cards. 

What receiver do you have exactly?

What's wrong with using the optical?


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## f00zz

Optical SPDIF is low bit rate (1.5mbits/s) only supports DTS and DOLBY Digital, the original versions. HD audio is uncompressed and only available through HDMI (like DTS HD master, Dolby Atmos or Dolby TrueHD)
I have a Denon receiver. Totally sucks there's no solution for HD audio straight out of the computer. I've been looking for years. If there was a passthrough displayport device that gave an ARC and supported 4k gsync etc would be wonderful. All it would have to do is split the audio out of the displayport and send it to hdmi.
And yes I know i can plug the receiver in to the hdmi but then it shows up as another monitor, and like I said windows adds it as another monitor and there's no way to disable it, and on top of that then I can't play copyrighted 4k content because that doesn't support hdcp 2.2 or whatever the version is so things like netflix won't work. Plus 2 monitors screws with gsync a lot and a host of other issues. 
Maybe a video card that has ARC/eARC built into it if it can even work that way so it can send audio only out to it. Haven't found a good solution for this yet.


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## UltraMega

f00zz said:


> Optical SPDIF is low bit rate (1.5mbits/s) only supports DTS and DOLBY Digital, the original versions. HD audio is uncompressed and only available through HDMI (like DTS HD master, Dolby Atmos or Dolby TrueHD)
> I have a Denon receiver. Totally sucks there's no solution for HD audio straight out of the computer. I've been looking for years. If there was a passthrough displayport device that gave an ARC and supported 4k gsync etc would be wonderful. All it would have to do is split the audio out of the displayport and send it to hdmi.
> And yes I know i can plug the receiver in to the hdmi but then it shows up as another monitor, and like I said windows adds it as another monitor and there's no way to disable it, and on top of that then I can't play copyrighted 4k content because that doesn't support hdcp 2.2 or whatever the version is so things like netflix won't work. Plus 2 monitors screws with gsync a lot and a host of other issues.
> Maybe a video card that has ARC/eARC built into it if it can even work that way so it can send audio only out to it. Haven't found a good solution for this yet.


I don't think there are any video cards that do arc on their own.

I feel what your going through. I tried going HDMI with a hdcp2.2 capable receiver and it still had a lot of issues. The hud on the screen in games would freak out the receiver. It was just really buggy. Probably would have worked better if I had used the arc channel to be honest. Ultimately I bought a decent sound card and went with analog 5.1.

HDMI audio is nice but the flip side of it is that you lose a basically any and all options to configure the sound, speakers, bass, etc. Unless your receiver has all the options you need, which o doubt, HDMI over PC with 5.1 is really only good for movies.


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## KyadCK

f00zz said:


> Optical SPDIF is low bit rate (1.5mbits/s) only supports DTS and DOLBY Digital, the original versions. HD audio is uncompressed and only available through HDMI (like DTS HD master, Dolby Atmos or Dolby TrueHD)
> I have a Denon receiver. Totally sucks there's no solution for HD audio straight out of the computer. I've been looking for years. If there was a passthrough displayport device that gave an ARC and supported 4k gsync etc would be wonderful. All it would have to do is split the audio out of the displayport and send it to hdmi.
> And yes I know i can plug the receiver in to the hdmi but then it shows up as another monitor, and like I said windows adds it as another monitor and there's no way to disable it, and on top of that then I can't play copyrighted 4k content because that doesn't support hdcp 2.2 or whatever the version is so things like netflix won't work. Plus 2 monitors screws with gsync a lot and a host of other issues.
> Maybe a video card that has ARC/eARC built into it if it can even work that way so it can send audio only out to it. Haven't found a good solution for this yet.


Just as an FYI, Optical is not limited to 1.5mbps, Optical is capable of at minimum 2 channel 24bit/48khz PCM these days (2304kbps), and can handle up-to 2 channel 24-bit/192khz. Technically higher, but it isn't realized in anything, though you are correct it still can not do modern multi channel formats.

A sound card would not have HDMI as there would be nothing for it to do. HDMI does not require any hardware you would find on a sound card and vice versa. You are correct that HDMI can not function without a display link as well, which is another reason such a card wouldn't exist.

ARC would not be available GPU-side as ARC is a from-target flow, not a from-source flow. There is nearly no possibility of getting HDCP 2.2 working with splitters/etc as it is a point-to-point handshake at the firmware level for DRM, so it isn't intended to work. You can scan the market to find an HDCP 2.2 compliant "splitter", though nearly all you find will be a scam and the others will be grey areas legally. you can't really use HDMI with a GSync monitor anyway, so its not a useful chain of thought anyhow.

You might be capable of running 7.1 (or higher) decoded out analog ports if you can find supporting software, but that software would likely break the HDCP handshake. Technically you can create fake audio objects that map to your actual outputs, so you miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight be able to fool the computer into thinking its an "hdmi output", but... this is unlikely, and even if you did, you would not be able to fake HDCP that way.

Your easiest option would be to "acquire" copies of the media you want to watch in a non-HDCP format, however you do so. Such is the state of Media DRM these days.

My one final Hail Mary for you...

Do you know if your monitor supports MST, or can you give me the exact model? It may be possible to do a post-monitor or hub-level audio extract without breaking the HDCP chain for video.

EDIT: And your receiver model and sound card model please.


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## f00zz

Monitor is using displayport, which also carries audio just like hdmi. It's ASUS PG27UQ. Receiver is Denon AVR 4000 something like that I'm not in front of it at the moment. I can plug the hdmi into the receiver and it does work and the HD audio works, the problem is it shows up as another monitor and I don't want it to. If there was a way to tell windows that it's not a monitor and to not send video to it or just send a blank image that would be fine but I haven't found a way to do that. Sound card is SB X-FI Titanium HD using the SPDIF out for now.


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## Jared Pace

I pass thru true hd 7.1 and dts x / dts hdma over nvidia Rtx gpu hdmi in windows 10 pro

I use mpc Be with some lav filter. Receiver gets atmos and dtsX bitstream

windows speaker sound configured to atmos




















edit. I don’t know if a sound card or how to output only the audio bitstream without a display signal in your case


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## KyadCK

f00zz said:


> Monitor is using displayport, which also carries audio just like hdmi. It's ASUS PG27UQ. Receiver is Denon AVR 4000 something like that I'm not in front of it at the moment. I can plug the hdmi into the receiver and it does work and the HD audio works, the problem is it shows up as another monitor and I don't want it to. If there was a way to tell windows that it's not a monitor and to not send video to it or just send a blank image that would be fine but I haven't found a way to do that. Sound card is SB X-FI Titanium HD using the SPDIF out for now.


HDMI won't do that, it's against spec.

DP can carry audio, yes, but as you have found, your target device also needs to support audio Even if the monitor did support audio, it would only link at 2.0. DisplayPort MST is a feature of DisplayPort that lets you use a "hub" to connect several devices to one port. MST hubs can be HDCP 2.2 compliant. This would have been useful if non-HDMI audio extractors existed.

I was going to offer "What-U-Hear" to steal and redirect an audio source, but that only goes to PCM 5.1, so useless.

If it's the AVR-X4000, then you are unfortunately SOL hardware side as while 7.1 DACs do exist, and you can use software to change the channels to PCM output, the AVR doesn't look to have multi channel input.

Networked devices can not normally be used as a streaming device. ...Mostly.

So... Disgusting possible solution time as I'm out of other ideas.

https://www.icecast.org/ or similar.
And the "Internet Radio" feature of the Denon.

The way your hardware is laid out just makes a good solution impossible unless you can get a 2nd monitor playing nicely with GSync or a 7.1 DAC/sound card and a amp/receiver with RCA multi channel input.


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## UltraMega

KyadCK said:


> The way your hardware is laid out just makes a good solution impossible unless you can get a 2nd monitor playing nicely with GSync or a 7.1 DAC/sound card and a amp/receiver with RCA multi channel input.


This. HDMI audio is nice but it's so locked down that it's too much trouble on PC. Analog is the way to go.


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## Kalm_Traveler

@f00zz did you ever find a solution to this? I decided to up my PC audio game recently and now have a solid 5.1 surround setup with a receiver as well but this all brought back nightmares of the last time I tried to do this a decade ago.

One Windows 10 era solution I've seen is to set both displays to duplicate, which I guess as of Windows 10 you can do even if the 2nd (phantom) screen doesn't support the main screens resolution. I've tried this and at least in my case it 'worked' but the second screen comes back after powering everything off then back on again.

Another solution I found is that Asus made a couple PCI-E sound cards around 2008 or so which had HDMI output. I'll try to find the exact names again but they were Sonar product lines.

To @KyadCK 's point about HDMI not sending only audio... I'm confused because my blu ray player has an audio-only HDMI output, as well as the regular HDMI out (Oppo UDP-203) so I'm not sure how they do it if it can't be done. That being said I've never tested it.

What I ended up doing back in the day was using a SoundBlaster that had DDL or DTS:C licensed in the drivers and doing that with optical to the receiver. IIRC DTS Connect has a bit higher bandwidth than Dolby Digital Live so the sound isn't quite as compressed but still - who wants to do that when it is technically possible to get uncompressed 8 channel out over HDMI? UGH!

I'm going to keep digging around and if I find a way to do this that doesn't result in a non-existent 2nd display in Windows I'll share it here.


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## MagicBox

You can use a low-cost video card with a HDMI connection. To Windows, audio through its HDMI port is a separate sound device which you can choose from the Windows Sound settings configuration.

Ow, and if you have an NVidia primary video card, you could use the low-cost card as a Phys-X addon when you go for an NVidia.


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## phazer11

f00zz said:


> Anyone know of a sound card with HDMI output for HD audio? Audio streams like atmos, dts master etc?
> And yes I know I can use the HDMI output of my video card for this, but I want a separate output stream for it. Since I use a 4k hdr monitor and it doesn't have speakers and also doesn't have ARC, I need another solution. I have HD audio denon receiver and speakers, currently using optical out.
> I know, i can use another HDMI output on my video card to the receiver, but the problem is, if the video card doesn't detect a monitor it won't output sound. Seems like some limitation of HDMI where it won't put sound unless it can also put video, which is stupid.
> Another issue is if i turn on the receiver so it acts as a passthrough for a monitor, the hdmi will work but then it sees it as a monitor and puts a display on it, and then of course it doesn't work with DRM because it doesn't see the hardware encryption stuff and I can't watch any copyright material or netflix etc unless i unplug it.
> 
> So the solution is, a sound card with hdmi sound output, but i can't find one anywhere. Or a device that will trick the hdmi into thinking it's connected to a display when it isn't (although this sucks because then my computer acts like it has 2 displays and then things disappear to the 2nd non existant display like it does if i make my receiver do it)
> 
> So best solution will be sound card like i have now soundblaster but instead of optical out it has hdmi out. Currently using DTS connect w/ spdif optical out which works fine but the sound quality is not nearly as good as the uncompressed hd audio streams from newer tech.
> 
> Thanks


So. Know this thread is old and it's not truely what you asked for i.e. not a sound card but I figured I'd post here in case it helped someone else, might do reddit too but what I did (and my aging GTX 780) can barely do this. I have a three monitor setup (a 3440x1440p Ultrawide, and 2x 2560x1440) with a 5.1ch Onkyo Receiver. I output bitstream to my receiver. Like you I get no sound if I turn the spare monitors off when say watching a movie. My 780 has 4 ports on it. One is a Displayport, one is a HDMI, and two DVI. I got some DVI->HDMI adapters. Now I'm outputting the audio over the HDMI and mirroring the display (@1080P which is the max resolution I can get my receiver to detect properly) with one of the ones that're on the DVI adapters. Now I can turn the spare monitors off and it still "sees" one on so I get audio while they actual displays are off. Downsides is for 4K playback the video chuggs unless you use DXVA or similar.


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## Chris jankunas

I have got a cambridge audio 4k bluray player which has an hdmi in, it has 2 hdm outputs one for tv and one for dedicated sound only.


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## Chris jankunas

Great cd player sacd as well


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## sfsreporter

Chris jankunas said:


> I have got a cambridge audio 4k bluray player which has an hdmi in, it has 2 hdm outputs one for tv and one for dedicated sound only.


Can you post the model number here?


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## umeng2002

Most of the issues in this realm are probably from licensing issues... to make a sound card output the newer formats over HDMI. All parties involved in the technology need to get their cut of each unit sold.


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## f00zz

Replying to my own thread. I solved this in a non elegant way by having two GPUs in my computer, also 2 different manufacturers, nvidia and amd so it was 2 different drivers. This made it so I can use the 2nd card as audio output to my receiver and it thinks it's another monitor of course but since it's not connected to my main GPU it doesn't mess with gsync as much, although there are still some glitches. I used windows to position the screen so it's impossible for the mouse to disappear on the non-screen area. This seems to work well enough.. If I use the same video card for it, all hell breaks loose, screen goes black requiring computer reset very often, gsync glitches out, huge pain. So older cheap radeon card rx550 or whatever low profile with pcie 1x adapter so it doesn't take my x16 lanes just to use for sound output, and then main GPU in normal x16 slot.


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## f00zz

What would absolutely be amazing is to have the receiver on my ethernet network, and my pc stream the bitstream to it and it decodes atmos,true hd dts:x etc , but i doubt that's ever going to happen although would be awesome and wouldn't need any of these crazy solutions


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## Ironheart777

Sorry to necro this thread but I registered here just to reply and possibly help. I've battled this issue myself and have a solution that should work. 

I have 3 monitors and an RTX3080. The 3080 has 3 DP ports and 1 HDMI port. 

Left monitor is connected directly to the GPU Via DP
Center monitor is connected directly to the GPU via DP
Right Monitor is connected directly to the GPU Via DP
Vizio 5.1.2 Atmos soundbar is connected to the GPU via HDMI cable (connected at the eARC hdmi input). 

Now, the problem is that like everyone else has mentioned, the soundbar does not register unless it has some kind of video source. This can be done by going into display settings and finding the "ghost" display for the soundbar and mirroring it to one of your monitors. From there I just renamed mine to Vizio soundbar in the sound settings and away I went. I do however have issues with the computer losing sound occasionally and the audio format being dropped from DTS:X or atmos to just nothing. I usually have to set it back to the right format and then hit the test button a few times for it to come back. It's a hassle, but there's no way I could go back to using traditional desktop speakers for gaming and consuming media content. Now I just need to figure out how to get one more HDMI out from somewhere so I can run my sensor panel for my rigs temp monitors lol. Hope this helps


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