HDMI audio connection from PC to stereo receiver troubles

[Graf Zahl]

Having a spare HDMI cable lying around I decided today to connect the PC to my stereo receiver. The problem: I get no sound. NVidia's driver stubbornly tries to tell me I got no audio capable device hooked up. It does insist that my monitor is capable, though, although it has no speakers.

So far I had no luck finding help through Google. Has anyone managed to get this working?

[wildweasel]

What model is your stereo receiver? HDMI audio can be kind of picky, and it could be that the receiver has to be in a certain mode or have a specific setting turned on in order to communicate as an audio device.

[insightguy]

HDMI Audio is a pain to work with, you usual have to go into playback devices to rectify that. (right click the audio icon on the bottom right)

If the monitor is not audio capable, I usually just go to playback devices and set the audio to the default speakers rather than the thing that the HDMI is connected to (the icon for the HDMI speaker, even if it does not exist, is usually a monitor rather than a speaker)

This is for windows though, not sure about the others

[Rachael]

Speaking of playback devices - make sure that "disabled devices" are shown, and then make sure that your monitor's audio is not disabled.

[insightguy]

@Rachael, How is that purple?

[Graf Zahl]

I think you all misunderstood where the problem is: I get all the audio connectors of the graphics card listed. It's just when I connect the receiver with the HDMI output on the graphics card, nothing happens. Connecting the same cable to my BluRay player works fine. So the input on the receiver is definitely active, it only looks like the computer fails to establish a communication.

I find this weird. We are in 2018 now and digital audio has become the norm, but I absolutely cannot manage to get a digital signal being transferred from the computer to the receiver. I'm still stuck with analogue. Sadly, my motherboard has no optical digital output which probably would work fine if it was available.

[Rachael]

I still suspect something's a bit fucky with your computer's audio settings. I'd check for several things: Are the levels correct? Are there any driver updates for NVidia that are addressing this? Do you see anything in your NVidia control panel regarding this maybe you can change some settings for? (Likewise for Intel, if that's the GPU that's handling your HDMI - you have to be very careful that you know where your HDMI is connected to internally - but if it's a desktop system it definitely should be your NVidia settings handling this)

There might also be something on the NVidia control panel to force the detection of your HDMI audio. See if that is there.

[Graf Zahl]

I already checked all this. There is no additional option. The option is deactivated saying that no sound playing hardware is connected and that's it. And because it's disabled I cannot do anything with it.
The driver I used is the lastest version, installed yesterday. And yes, it's surely the connector on the graphics card. My motherboard has no digital output at all, like I said. Otherwise I'd have tried long ago to connect that. The computer is 6 years old, back then this apparently wasn't standard yet.

[Rachael]

Okay, I hate to do redundant things but this may be necessary to force detection of the HDMI audio -

Try going into device manager, and removing *all* your audio devices, and finally your display adapter, and then reboot. (Do not rescan, just reboot) And then log in as usual, open the device manager again, and see if the drivers reinstall properly, and then after that, check your multimedia control panel (mmsys.cpl, the one me and insightguy posted pictures of) again.

[kodi]

You have to spoof EDID data.