Right now I'm using an HDMI Audio Extractor with video being send to a 2nd monitor via HDMI and audio being sent to my speaker system via Optical Audio Toslink. How can I get 5.1 Surround Sound out of the Alienware m15 R3? I have a brand new Alienware m15 R3 (ordered ).
I did, but the Xonar SE was not listed in the list of sound cards for that software, therefore, it didn't install correctly.After a fair amount of internet searching I've come to the conclusion that the Dell Forums are my next course of action before spending any more time/money trying to fix my audio issues. Since my TV's EDID does not report 5.1 over HDMI with my GPU in Windows, I can only select Stereo in the control panel settings. Apparently the EDID for my TV only reports stereo with HDMI when (based on my research), surround sound should be possible using HDMI only. Have you gone into Sound Control Panel and selected 5.1/7.1 configuration when using audio over HDMI?
I'm trying to do 4k 60Hz HDR with surround so ARC passthrough is out of the question.
I have, it caps out at 1080p 60Hz without HDR. Have you tried using the soundbar's ARC passthrough? Also the soundbar does not have the other 3.5mm plugs needed to do surround that way. Optical/Toslink does compressed 5.1, why are you doing this?īecause I really can't tell the difference and I'd rather have 5.1 surround even if it's "compressed". The soundbar itself is pretty great to me for sound compared other sound bars I've used and I'm not able to scrounge up the cash to get a real receiver/speakers.
Windows 10 (I think 1904 build, I'll have to double check)īecause its girlfriend approved: doesn't take up as much space as an A/V receiver, was cheaper than an A/V receiver and speakers, and it was a gift from said girlfriend. I need to find a PCIe sound card that will do the decoding so I can have surround within Windows and most games. Found out that it doesn't decode DTS so it did stereo only when using SPDIF.
What I tried doing was PC -> TV via HDMI for video, PC -> Soundbar via optical using the ASUS Xonar SE soundcard SPDIF/Optical. PC -> TV via HDMI -> Soundbar -> only can do stereo sound Samsung MU8000 65 inch 4k 60Hz, HDMI 2.0 with regular ARC Vizio S3651N-H6 5.1 surround soundbar (we'll get to that in a bit) Apparently it's still being sold as new and the packaging shows that it can decode DTS/Dolby so I should get games and windows in 5.1 surround with my equipment. The only PCIe card I could find that wasn't $100+ was the Creative Sound Blaster Z, the red one from like 10 years ago. I'm needing a soundcard that will do the decoding since Dolby Live and DTS Interactive are no longer easy to find, support, and are outdated and replaced by the Atmos software and DTS: X software. So I found out the hard way that not all sound cards do "decoding" for DTS/Dolby surround on PC which means that only content such as videos/movies that are encoded with DTS/Dolby will work just fine, but video games and Windows 10 itself will only report stereo. I had no idea how much of a headache surround sound is without getting an A/V receiver, let alone, getting surround sound on PC.