The HDMI connection on a Video Card

[TheGreatSatan]

Does it carry sound too?

[slaveofconvention]

Depends on the card, but yes, it CAN - the onboard HDMI in my media center carries sound too, but only from the onboard sound - if you have a sound card instead you might have other issues to deal with...

[Oneslowz28]

Same with my HTPC. The onboard will carry sound but non of my HDMI equipped video cards will.

[x88x]

My GTX260's have an input connection near the back of the card that will accept input from certain sound card headers and pipe it into an HDMI connection if you use an adapter. ..at least, that's how it's supposed to work, I've never tried it.

[Konrad]

Does the HDMI audio source come from local (video card) or external (audio card, mobo) processing?

Or put another way —

Do some video cards offer better audio quality than others? Will upgrading a separate audio card upgrade the HDMI audio quality?

[x88x]

It depends on how the card handles it. My GTX260's, for example, have an audio input, so they just pass on the audio stream. If the video card actually did the audio processing itself, then no, upgrading a separate sound card wouldn't do anything.

[Diamon]

Never heard of a video card with on-board audio. Take a look at the card, if there's input headers for sound on it there should be no problem.

Or maybe you could splice the sound into the HMDI cable at a later point if you're feelin handy with the soldering iron.

[Twigsoffury]

My ATi Radeon HD 5770 has onboard 7.1 Audio.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5770/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5770-overview.aspx#2



ATI Avivo HD Video & Display technology7
UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
Advanced post-processing and scaling8
Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
Independent video gamma control
Dynamic video range control
Support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2
Dual-stream 1080p playback support9,10
DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP11
Max resolution: 2560x160012
Integrated DisplayPort output
Max resolution: 2560x160012
Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
Max resolution: 1920x120012
Integrated VGA output
Max resolution: 2048x153612
3D stereoscopic display/glasses support13
Integrated HD audio controller
Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats

[Diamon]

That's pretty neat. But I'd prefer pass-through headers over an onboard controller.

[Twigsoffury]

That's pretty neat. But I'd prefer pass-through headers over an onboard controller.

yea i have no idea how good this onboard audio is, but i highly doubt its as good as a dedicated sound card.

[Konrad]

I think the fidelity of audio chips has already surpassed human perceptions. Unless you're doing professional music mastering stuff and constantly cranking your dial to 11. I suppose an onboard audio solution would have to meet spec for whatever DirectX lib the card supports, support HD, Dolby, 7.1, etc etc ... so it can't be all that bad. I'm sure the true audiophiles would strongly disagree.

I note that my older audio cards can actually get fairly warm. So they must be pulling a lot of power. Video cards already pull heavy power, so they might be forced to opt for low-power (and low-capability) audio components. I'm of the opinion that (on all tech products) if awesome specs for a subcomponent are not proudly advertised then it's always a mediocre low-cost part and handwaved with a focus on other more glamourous features. Maybe a dedicated audio card has more wavetable templates or voices or whatever so it can produce richer more vibrant sounds, maybe it has more sophisticated amplifiers and filters so it can output a stronger steadier cleaner signal. No doubt it's packed full of high-tech goodies that are hardly, if ever, used. I really don't know ... integrated audio is usually good enough for my needs, lol.

I don't think you can wiresplice audio into an HDMI cable. My understanding is that the audio component is not discrete, but is encoded into checksum packets along with the rest of the digital stream. You'd probably need to build some kind of mcu multiplex hack or something to get it working, or maybe a just simple digital signal pass-filter of some sort ... much easier to purchase dedicated hardware.

[Twigsoffury]

You totally passed how many voices (sounds) the card can do at any one point!


And that is the major winning factor in a sound card. (in my opinion)

Older OB audio handles 16 voices, with the new "HD" OB audio seeming to handle anywhere from 24 or 32 voices.

While mid range sound blasters packing 64 voices and the highest end cards supporting 128 voices or even higher

My buddies Azuentec says it packs 128+128 voices under the hood.

a game i play (Battleground Europe MMO) deals with tanks, infantry, planes , anti tank guns...well the whole chibang and you can instantly tell the difference between 32 voices and 128. sometimes theres so much s@#t going on that you won't hear your gun fire or the tank rolling past is silent. with 128 voices i know i'll hear every last sound that the designers intended you to hear.

Another good game is Grand theft auto, With onboard audio you rarely hear the rain itself when its raining outside especially when there are other objects or people in the screen making sound, With the azuentec, not only do you hear the rain hitting the ground, but you'll still hear everything else.

sometimes you'll hear cut outs as well in games like a explosion ending to soon or a car cutting in and out as it passes.



The other factor is just how loud is can push my three subwoofers, i measure that by length of time it takes a neighbor to complain. 10~15 minutes for low end, 5 minutes for midrange, and 3~5 seconds is where i'm currently sitting.

[x88x]

/\ These. Another good example is Crysis. That game was actually the reason I originally got my (now late :( ) Xonar. Even with a high-end CPU, running it with onboard audio, the sound would lag a good second behind the video at times.

Also, re the sound quality itself, I think that's a lot like FPS or audio bitrates; some people can tell the difference, some people can't. For example, when I got my Xonar, even on my poor-to-mediocre speaker system, I could tell the difference immediately. The clarity of the signal was a huge improvement.

[Twigsoffury]

/\ These. Another good example is Crysis. That game was actually the reason I originally got my (now late :( ) Xonar. Even with a high-end CPU, running it with onboard audio, the sound would lag a good second behind the video at times.

Also, re the sound quality itself, I think that's a lot like FPS or audio bitrates; some people can tell the difference, some people can't. For example, when I got my Xonar, even on my poor-to-mediocre speaker system, I could tell the difference immediately. The clarity of the signal was a huge improvement.

Really good Channel separation as well. not to mention built in Headphone amps on the "nice" cards that'll make your headset vibrate off your ears at times.

I honestly think it boils down to


a.) how much hearing damage you have.

b.) how much you honestly pay attention to sound and acoustics


c.) Lots of people forget to set the sample rate in the control panel from the default 44,000hz to 96,000hz or even 192,000Hz (if your sound card is nice) when they get a new sound card, or even if they already have a decent audio card. I think that can be part of peoples reasoning why they can't tell the difference between a onboard card and a dedicated card

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/967/92000.png

i have noticed though, some older games when combined with windows 7 will not work at 192khz 96khz

[Konrad]

You can test audio output frequency response easily.

4G60hM1W_mk

Mine cuts off at exactly 12KHz, even though I know for a fact (from work) that I can definitely hear higher frequencies. My SoundBlaster specs claim 22KHz. So I'm assuming the headphones just can't replicate higher tones.

[x88x]

Interesting. Mine cut out at ~15kHz, but I've never had occasion to accurately measure my hearing and I'm operating on less-than-stellar speakers and sound card right now, so idk which gave up first.

[AmEv]

I can DEFINITELY hear >20K myself.

[Diamon]

Mine cuts out around 18khz. Just as well, I don't want to listen to those sounds anyway ^^

[nevermind1534]

Mine cut out around 17KHz with my Creative Fatal1ty USB headset. Not quite sure if it was me or the headset.

[slaveofconvention]

Extremely high frequency sound can damage hearing so I'd imagine that speaker/headset manufacturers artificially limit output range to prevent them getting sued! Of course, some basic cheap speakers/headsets may be actually incapable of producing those sounds, but I seriously doubt if they could, the makers would ship them actually able to...

[Konrad]

I tried the test again, this time with my good headphones (http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er6.aspx), audio faded sharply somewhere just past 18KHz (probably my hearing threshold). Agreed, it's probably better to not be able to hear those awful sounds.

[Twigsoffury]

I tried the test again, this time with my good headphones (http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er6.aspx), audio faded sharply somewhere just past 18KHz (probably my hearing threshold). Agreed, it's probably better to not be able to hear those awful sounds.

I can hear capacitors sometimes squealing

i heard my buddies router squealing, three days later its dead.

still hear old CRT televisions putting out that extremely high pitched scream.

i love my hearing

[AmEv]

Ugh! You can hear it when the HUGE CRTs are on, too???

One reason I hate watching movies in class.
(top reason, however, is the classmates.... :x )

[TheMainMan]

The CRT whine is one of the most annoying noises I can think of. I could always tell when someone in my house was watching TV on mute due to the noise.

I've never tested my hearing or what my gear can do, I'll have to try that when I get home from class.

[Konrad]

I think I'll stick with dedicated audio cards.

Probably better sound. Maybe this frees up more processing, power, and bus bandwidth on the graphics card(s) for actual graphics instead of suboptimal audio. I'm also having a hard time kicking my ancient bias ... remember the early days of audio+music+CDROM combo cards and remember how often they would often partially fail after a while?