AVR for PC setup? (1 Viewer)

[kalm_traveler]

I’m just trying to help you with your home theater and responding to your concerns about HDR on your PC. Gaming is a whole different can of worms. Does your television support GSync? My 75” Samsung QLED supports FreeSync with my Radeons. But I keep my PC gaming (I have two rigs - one dedicated to VR and one on a 32” FreeSync display) and my cinema separate. I could easily game with my HTPC if I wanted to, though.

oooooh this thread is about my PC's setup, not the home theater at all

Home theater is entirely separate and all finished for the rest of however long I'm in this house

When I first moved here in 2014 I configured the room with the PC desk just behind the home theater's main seating couch so that it could basically use the theater's audio with more or less the correct positioning, but some years after that rearranged the room so the PC desk is on the far back wall now which necessitated getting separate speakers.

Recently decided that I wanted the PC to have surround again for a better gaming experience (as well as clearer music listening) so I ditched a Klipsch Powergate (small stereo + LFE preout '100 wpc x2 @ 8ohms' DAC/amp) in favor of an AVR (ended up with this Marantz SR5010), replaced a pair of HSU HB-1 MK2 bookshelf speakers with SVS Ultra bookshelves, and quit sharing one of the home theater's HSU VTF-15H Mk2 subwoofers by adding an SVS SB-3000 sub just for the PC.

Ordered two more SVS Ultra bookshelves and their Ultra center speaker to finish things off since once I get an idea in my head it's pretty much impossible not to go through with it, so here we are with a very nice 5.1 surround setup dedicated for just the PC.

However... the aforementioned annoyance with regard to the best way to get sound from the PC to its' dedicated AVR remains.

To sum up the 'problem' as it were: The goal is to get the highest surround sound quality out from my PC to its' dedicated AVR ideally with no shenanigans around displays / desktop settings.
As far as I'm currently aware there are 3 ways to get a surround signal out from the PC.

1. HDMI from the main graphics card - highest quality, supports up to 7.1 uncompressed PCM but seems to force Windows to see the AVR as a second monitor and no way to pass only audio. This screws up 'full screen' apps and causes me to occasionally lose my mouse on the phantom second screen
2. Motherboard's 5.1 analogue outputs - not sure if this would be objectively better or worse than a DTS Connect compressed(lossy) 5.1 signal over optical but it would eliminate the video nonsense with HDMI
3. Motherboard's optical out with a DTS Connect compressed lossy digital signal. I was utilizing this back when sharing the home theater's system. Works fine but is compressed and lossy so not ideal given the fairly high end audio setup, but would also eliminate the video nonsense with HDMI

I found that in Windows 10 if you set two displays to 'mirrored' that does remove the second desktop area, but if I enable that, the real screen seems to be kind of glitchy / not smooth anymore (PC screen is a 38" ultrawide that I run at 3840 x 1600 resolution, 144Hz SDR over DisplayPort). I've also found that if I turn the AVR on before the PC it seems to be less glitchy than if I turn the AVR after Windows has booted up.

So I suppose the question here is can we figure out some way to keep HDMI sound but work around the silly behavior of a 2nd phantom desktop, or if not... between DTS Connect over optical and three 3.5mm mini jack to dual RCA analogue cables which would give the best sound quality?

 

[CyFactor]

Ah, okay. I'm with you now. I would assume that your display also has HDMI input, correct? Then perhaps this is your answer: See on Amazon

Run HDMI out to this device, then connect your monitor to the HDMI out and the audio that is extracted over to the AVR. For < $25, it might be worth a shot.

What model graphics card do you have? Does it support G-Sync over HDMI, or just DisplayPort? Is your monitor running proprietary G-Sync, or Active Sync (newer Nvidia cards can support it)?

 

[CyFactor]

Actually, disregard last. It looks like that splitter uses the Audio Return Channel from the television, which your monitor won't have.

I just run my PC to my AVR, then connect the monitor to the AVR output. But doing so might lose your 144 Hz G-Sync capability since it will identify the AVR and not the monitor. Somewhere out there is a splitter/extractor that will work, I'm sure.

 

[CyFactor]

Perhaps this one? See on Amazon

 

[CyFactor]

Perhaps this one? See on Amazon

But then you'd be limited to 4K@60 Hz. Hmmm.... Now I'm beginning to feel your pain.

 

[Dave Upton]

How about this? https://hdfury.com/product/vertex-4k60-444-600mhz/

From their description:

Vertex allows any source (Blu-ray, UHD Blu-ray, media players, satellite receiver, game consoles, PCs, etc.) to be shown on any of the connected displays and any sources HDMI audio to be played on any AVR.
With built-in scalers you don’t have to miss any 4K HDR signal because of older legacy equipment in the signal path.

 

[CyFactor]

How about this? https://hdfury.com/product/vertex-4k60-444-600mhz/

From their description:

For that price he could just buy a 5.1 PC speaker system. I have a Logitech Z-5500 on my 2D gaming rig that I've had for over a decade.

See on Amazon

 

[CyFactor]

 

[kalm_traveler]

But then you'd be limited to 4K@60 Hz. Hmmm.... Now I'm beginning to feel your pain.

I'll have to look into those but something in the back of my mind is telling me that I had to use DisplayPort for 3840 x 1600 @ 144Hz.

This is the monitor: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-38GL950G-B-gaming-monitor

It does have 1 hdmi in but only has Gsync and/or adaptive sync on DisplayPort, that's probably what I was thinking.

How about this? https://hdfury.com/product/vertex-4k60-444-600mhz/

From their description:

I don't think that would help since the PC monitor itself needs to be connected with DisplayPort for Gsync.

ooh you guys asked about the graphics card, it's 2x Nvidia Titan RTX which I just learned yesterday you can't drive screens from both cards if SLI is enabled, interestingly enough. The Titan RTX is the same GPU series as the 20xx Geforce cards which do all support Gsync over HDMI 2.1, but my monitor does not.

The engineer in me says that there must be some way to get the sound to go out but not be forced to simultaneously have a phantom extra display at the same time.

Oppo had an 'audio only' output on their blu ray players so whatever witchcraft they were working should in theory be doable elsewhere right?

 

[Dave Upton]

I had one of those in college -

I'll have to look into those but something in the back of my mind is telling me that I had to use DisplayPort for 3840 x 1600 @ 144Hz.

This is the monitor: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-38GL950G-B-gaming-monitor

It does have 1 hdmi in but only has Gsync and/or adaptive sync on DisplayPort, that's probably what I was thinking.


I don't think that would help since the PC monitor itself needs to be connected with DisplayPort for Gsync.

ooh you guys asked about the graphics card, it's 2x Nvidia Titan RTX which I just learned yesterday you can't drive screens from both cards if SLI is enabled, interestingly enough. The Titan RTX is the same GPU series as the 20xx Geforce cards which do all support Gsync over HDMI 2.1, but my monitor does not.

The engineer in me says that there must be some way to get the sound to go out but not be forced to simultaneously have a phantom extra display at the same time.

Oppo had an 'audio only' output on their blu ray players so whatever witchcraft they were working should in theory be doable elsewhere right?

Really it sounds like your issue is that you need to mirror the two displays - but in reality use HDMI for audio only (which can't be done natively).

The idea here would be to make your displays mirrored and set the LG monitor as primary.

To do that, you'd have to use a solution like this to fake your LG's EDID for the receiver. This way you could set the exact same display parameters to avoid any funky switching of resolution as you power things off/on.

https://hdfury.com/product/dr-hdmi-4k/

You could then choose the HDMI of the HDFury as your audio device to bitstream audio