AV Receiver with PC?

[Troezar]

Not being that up on audio would this be possible?

AV receiver + AMP +DAC connected to the PC to give all the advantages of external upgradeable hardware and things like Dolby Atmos, surround sound for 3D effects/ positional audio in games.

It sounds more expensive but with more options?

 

[The_Arbiter]

Yes, the receiver is just a pass through for video generally. The receiver will do your amping and audio decoding, so no need for other hardware. You can split video and audio signal however and use a separate dac/amp, but i'd just buy a decent receiver in the first place.

Gsync/freesync are unlikely to work through a receiver. Some *may* work, but i can't be sure unless you checked every single brand.

All depends what your goal/desire is?

 

[Troezar]

Yes, the receiver is just a pass through for video generally. The receiver will do your amping and audio decoding, so no need for other hardware. You can split video and audio signal however and use a separate dac/amp, but i'd just buy a decent receiver in the first place.

Gsync/freesync are unlikely to work through a receiver. Some *may* work, but i can't be sure unless you checked every single brand.

All depends what your goal/desire is?

So many options! I see what you're saying. I was thinking you could run the audio separately through the AV receiver thus retaining all the advantages of the GPU video processing and as you say Freesync, whilst also getting things like Dolby Atmos that I don't think the high end sound cards provide?

Am I right in thinking you can't have the best of both worlds?

 

[Radox-0]

I don't know what you mean by AV receiver + AMP + DAC.

If you mean AV receiver for say speaker, but then a AMP/DAC for headphones then there is a method I use (without e-ARC which hopefully one day will solve this all when on all bits in the chain).

Right now this build I am typing on uses a G-Sync PG348Q, but for Audio a Sony AV receiver via HDMI off the GPU for 5.1 Audio. The G-Sync monitor is connected via Displayport and 100hz / G-Sync work fine. The AV receiver is connected via HDMI on the same GPU and in the options menu I select the AV receiver and get the options to select 5.1 etc in the sound panel. The AV receiver is represented as a Phantom monitor within windows and Nvidia control panel. Hopefully below shows what I mean:



For DAC and AMP part, I also have optical going into the DAC from the motherboard which in turn goes into various AMPs which has no issues.

With that said, in the Living room I have a specific gaming HPTC, QLED TV along with a Dolby Atmos 5.2.2 setup. There things do not work quiet as smoothly. I can do the same connection type as above, i.e one HDMI into TV and another HDMI in to AV receiver but now and then get flickering after a while. Not sure if its down to using two HDMI's off the GPU rather then 1 DP / 1 HDMI /TV being HDR / 12 bit 4:2:2 etc, so with this method reverted to using GPU --> AV receiver into TV which works flawlessly with HDR and ATMOS, but no G-Sync / FreeSync pass through. So while I have got the method working perfect in PC above for years now with multiple monitors over time, something seems amis with my living room setup.

 

[Troezar]

@Radox-0 Yes, your PC set up sounds like what I was trying to describe. Separating the audio and video so you can get the best of both. I presume if you watched a film on your PC you could still get the support for things like Atmos?

 

[Radox-0]

@Radox-0 Yes, your PC set up sounds like what I was trying to describe. Separating the audio and video so you can get the best of both. I presume if you watched a film on your PC you could still get the support for things like Atmos?

Not on the above rig, is only 5.1 which works perfect.

However will check on my living room setup when I get a chance this evening as I will need to move few cables around. As I say, was being temperamental so went typical route there of GPU --> AV reciever --> TV with that set up.

 

[Radox-0]

@Radox-0 Yes, your PC set up sounds like what I was trying to describe. Separating the audio and video so you can get the best of both. I presume if you watched a film on your PC you could still get the support for things like Atmos?

Okay doubled checked further and good news. Signal splits perfectly fine, so Audio including ATMOS to receiver and video direct to TV. Below pic should show what I mean with netflix daredevil showing Atmos signal correctly being detected: Av receiver also lights up as showing correct Audio format as expected.



There is one caveat which is issue I was having before, for me at least I cannot have ARC connection between my TV and AV receiver, while having the above split in play from the PC as signals seem to get confused and TV flickers now and then when on the PC. If you have just the PC connected up, seems to work fine. So in my case for my main PC which is just the monitor and AV receiver being static, non issue, for HTPC in living room with other devices while wanting to use ARC, not so much.

 

[The_Arbiter]

The above i thought was only available via 3rd party software, nice to see otherwise, but i *think* that may still not be the case for AMD and therefore freesync. But i'm no GPU guru, and seem to remember looking at splitting before, can't remember the drawbacks but didn't do it myself, but that could be for another reason. So Nvidia might be a good shout there.

What is your end goal OP?

Couple of pointers. You can still plug USB amps into your computer while using a receiver, windows does this easy. Win10 offers some surround functions for speakers or headphones. Higher end motherboards offer native/built in spdif or coax out.
Sound Blaster X7 is a bit of everything product:
Integrated mic, mic port, spdif in and out, blutooth, speaker amp, dual headphone ports, surround decoder, an attractive piece of kit.

How big is your budget xD You could easily spend thousands before touching a speaker or headphone.

 

[Radox-0]

The above i thought was only available via 3rd party software, nice to see otherwise, but i *think* that may still not be the case for AMD and therefore freesync. But i'm no GPU guru, and seem to remember looking at splitting before, can't remember the drawbacks but didn't do it myself, but that could be for another reason. So Nvidia might be a good shout there.

What is your end goal OP?

Couple of pointers. You can still plug USB amps into your computer while using a receiver, windows does this easy. Win10 offers some surround functions for speakers or headphones. Higher end motherboards offer native/built in spdif or coax out.
Sound Blaster X7 is a bit of everything product:
Integrated mic, mic port, spdif in and out, blutooth, speaker amp, dual headphone ports, surround decoder, an attractive piece of kit.

How big is your budget xD You could easily spend thousands before touching a speaker or headphone.

Yeah you have been able to split audio for years now without 3rd party software thankfully. Been using this method over 5 years now without an issue. AMD actually can also split fine as well, Had a R9 Nano at release (2016) performing same duties in being able to split Audio and Video few years back before moving HTPC to the 1080Ti at the time. Not sure on the FreeSync part as I did not have a monitor as such but with Nvidia's G-Sync side working for years now, would hope AMD also have it in play.

Biggest drawback really is a phantom monitor is created to represent the AV receiver in Windows and Nvidia / AMD drivers respectively. Its not a massive issue per say, just set the resolution as a tiny screen and set it off to one side you remember and mouse does not really go to. In games its a non-issue as your usually fullscreen. May become a bigger pain if you have multiple actual monitors I imagine alongside the phantom one.

 

[Troezar]

The above i thought was only available via 3rd party software, nice to see otherwise, but i *think* that may still not be the case for AMD and therefore freesync. But i'm no GPU guru, and seem to remember looking at splitting before, can't remember the drawbacks but didn't do it myself, but that could be for another reason. So Nvidia might be a good shout there.

What is your end goal OP?

Couple of pointers. You can still plug USB amps into your computer while using a receiver, windows does this easy. Win10 offers some surround functions for speakers or headphones. Higher end motherboards offer native/built in spdif or coax out.
Sound Blaster X7 is a bit of everything product:
Integrated mic, mic port, spdif in and out, blutooth, speaker amp, dual headphone ports, surround decoder, an attractive piece of kit.

How big is your budget xD You could easily spend thousands before touching a speaker or headphone.

My end goal was just to see if it was possible to get both the advantages of gsync/Freesync whilst also not compromising on film/video. It looks like it is possible albeit not as elegant as dropping in a soundcard but so far that seems to be the only way to do it all.

@Radox-0 thanks, not too many compromises then, just a bit of fiddling around with cables and settings.

 

[The_Arbiter]

Ah yeah, now i remember reading about that. Thanks for the info! @RadoX

OP, It's really just the money thing then. The X7 above is USB input btw. Quality output of sound would be better from a better dac, but you'll need speakers/headphones of top quality to notice. But people's own hearing or preference will be the dictator of that.

 

[Troezar]

Ah yeah, now i remember reading about that. Thanks for the info! @RadoX

OP, It's really just the money thing then. The X7 above is USB input btw. Quality output of sound would be better from a better dac, but you'll need speakers/headphones of top quality to notice. But people's own hearing or preference will be the dictator of that.

Agreed, I'm just old enough to not hear some of the more annoying sounds, probably have me a few quid! I'm definitely not in the money no object category and at the moment the garden is absorbing all the spare cash

 

[Radox-0]

My end goal was just to see if it was possible to get both the advantages of gsync/Freesync whilst also not compromising on film/video. It looks like it is possible albeit not as elegant as dropping in a soundcard but so far that seems to be the only way to do it all.

@Radox-0 thanks, not too many compromises then, just a bit of fiddling around with cables and settings.

no problem. As I say I know AMD in itself splits fine, but just never confirmed if FreeSync will work, can’t imagine why it would not like it does with Nvidia as full signal goes to monitor fine inc higher refresh rates.

hopefully as eARC becomes more popular all these compromises will go away.