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-   -   problem with audio - question (http://www.hardwarebanter.com/showthread.php?t=200260)

Yes[_2_] November 5th 20 05:28 AM

problem with audio - question
 
I have an Asus B150-M-A mobo with an integrated graphics chip and
Realtek ALC887 codec. I connect it via HDMI cable to my living room TV
when I want to use the pc. It's worked very well for my needs (web
surfing and anime videos). Today, the audio stopped working. The
videos works.

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the current
problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while googling that
indicated the problem will actually involve the on-board graphics chip
because that's the chip that combines the audio and video signals to
the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?

When everything is doee, I just want to get back to the way things were
before - use the pc to surf and watch stuff and display it using the TV
as my monitor like I've been doing. Obviously, buying a new mobo might
solve my problem, but would buying a video card or a sound card fix my
problem?

Thanks,

John

Paul[_28_] November 5th 20 08:50 AM

problem with audio - question
 
Yes wrote:
I have an Asus B150-M-A mobo with an integrated graphics chip and
Realtek ALC887 codec. I connect it via HDMI cable to my living room TV
when I want to use the pc. It's worked very well for my needs (web
surfing and anime videos). Today, the audio stopped working. The
videos works.

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the current
problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while googling that
indicated the problem will actually involve the on-board graphics chip
because that's the chip that combines the audio and video signals to
the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?

When everything is doee, I just want to get back to the way things were
before - use the pc to surf and watch stuff and display it using the TV
as my monitor like I've been doing. Obviously, buying a new mobo might
solve my problem, but would buying a video card or a sound card fix my
problem?

Thanks,

John


It's a good thing you caught that.

Analog sound comes from a different place than digital sound.

Examples of analog sound sources (lime green colored 1/8" jack)

1) I/O plate lime green - HDAudio chip on motherboard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace motherboard

2) Faceplate, audio soundcard - Audio chip on soundcard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace plugin soundcard

3) USB audio dongle (two jack) - Audio chip inside dongle
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace dongle

First generation digital sound, ran at 6mbit/sec over
a coaxial cable. It was called S'PDIF. It carried stereo
in perhaps 24bit, or could carry AC3 5.1 compressed (picked
right off a movie DVD). The copper version of S'PDIF used
the coax cable, 1 volt amplitude, transformer isolated (to
avoid ground differences when cabling up). The optical
version was called TOSLink, used a red LED lightsource,
and cheap dental plastic fiber cable.

S'PDIF could come from (1) and use a stubby I/O plate addon
or be a jack on the PC. I don't know if having it on (2) or
(3) was common. On motherboards, a square connector with
a rubber cover can be a TOSLink digital coming from (1).

Then came HDMI audio. At first, HDMI was little better than
a different connector on DVI. If you had an old enough
computer, it wasn't really HDMI, and it also didn't have
audio as a result. DVI doesn't have audio. HDMI made by
bodging a DVI signal, doesn't have audio capability either.

Then we had HDMI, and it still didn't have audio. But at
least the cable clock went from 165MHz max DVI clock
to 330MHz HDMI clock. It was "real" HDMI only in the
sense that it had broken its bonds and limits with DVI.

The first digital audio on HDMI was probably on video
cards. They put an S'PDIF connector (!) on the top edge
of NVidia cards for example. The cable might have been
a couple pins. And a wire went to the S'PDIF three pin or
so, mobo header connector. That was a kind of "passthru audio",
digital in form. The 6mbit/sec S'PDIF was then converted
into 7.1 LPCM (= no compression) on HDMI. The Windows
sound would make a mention of "digital" and sometimes
"AMD, NVidia, Intel" or similar branding. Intel having
killed off a lot of other potential mobo video sources.

The last several standards versions of HDMI, they're
being delivered right from the video card, without
"passthru". No info is available on the CODEC logic
block in the GPU on the video card. One version used
a RealTek driver, implying Realtek sold some IP
(intellectual property) for an HDAudio sound chip
for inclusion in the GPU. As I don't think a 48-pin
HDAudio chip has been spotted on the video card.

*******

Now, your audio has flown the coop, because of a software
issue. It means some service has taken a ****. Or,
perhaps you removed a service responsible for
"Audio Endpoint" as instructed by the blackviper.com
website. I've had to scrounge through Google before,
to find mention of what service that is, but I didn't
keep notes. If you've "blackvipered" this setup,
then now is a good time to mention it :-) I won't
give you a lot of hell for this, as it's easy to be
tricked into doing that stuff based on Internet info.
Blackviper site, tells you how to disable a lot of
services (I suppose, a topic popular with rabid
gamers with 32GB machines, out to save 3 bytes by
turning off a service).

Now, all that guff I typed out in the first section
above, will come in handy. This article shows how
to select and set a "Default" audio source in Windows 10.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

ASUS VE278 (NVidia High Definition Audio)

Well, I'm not sure exactly that what one is :-)
I looked it up, and that's the name of an LCD monitor
with speakers in it. So that HDMI port gained the name
of the monitor when the monitor got plugged in. Neat.

You can reset the audio setting to make your named
monitor (the TV set), the output for sound if you
want.

That would be the first step, before the panic sets in.
No need (yet) to be buying hardware :-) If the
video card outputs, HDMI connectors, are not mentioned
at all, then I'd check Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) and
see see if any yellow marks are present, indicating
a driver got updated by Microsoft and is no longer
loading properly.

1) Check settings. Even setting a volume to zero
somewhere can kill sound. Check that a mute button
hasn't been pressed (mute = 0 volume), or that the
volume dial or slider is set to zero.

Make sure the Default audio output is set to the TV.

Check Device Manager for yellow marks. Note any
code (Code 10, Code 22 etc). You can even go into
Device Manager and select Disable for a piece of
hardware, and it won't look "damaged" at all. That's
why you have to check stuff in there.

2) Think about any BlackVipering you've been doing.
The turning off of (unrelated!) services can kill audio.
I didn't believe that was possible, until someone
managed to do it. The audio service did not list the
Dependency in the Dependency tab. And that is when I
first learned that the Dependency tab is not computed by
software, but is statically entered by (mistake making)
humans at MSFT.

3) You would need to spend considerable time working
on (1) and (2), before concluding it was hardware.
And in particular, it's highly highly unlikely that
a logic block in the GPU blew up. If the computer
image on the TV screen was a mess, it would be easy
to see how decoding audio from that stream could be
difficult. Since you make no mention of substandard
or destroyed video quality, then that's part of the
highly highly unlikely part. The sound just can't fail.
Maybe if the speaker amp blew out on the TV set :-) ...

Paul

Steve Hough November 5th 20 01:40 PM

problem with audio - question
 
Paul was thinking very hard :
Yes wrote:
I have an Asus B150-M-A mobo with an
integrated graphics chip and
Realtek ALC887 codec. I connect it via HDMI
cable to my living room TV
when I want to use the pc. It's worked very
well for my needs (web
surfing and anime videos). Today, the audio
stopped working. The
videos works.

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound
card because the current
problem is no sound, but I ran across a
comment while googling that
indicated the problem will actually involve
the on-board graphics chip
because that's the chip that combines the
audio and video signals to
the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?

When everything is doee, I just want to get
back to the way things were
before - use the pc to surf and watch stuff
and display it using the TV
as my monitor like I've been doing.
Obviously, buying a new mobo might
solve my problem, but would buying a video
card or a sound card fix my
problem?

Thanks,

John


It's a good thing you caught that.

Analog sound comes from a different place than
digital sound.

Examples of analog sound sources (lime green
colored 1/8" jack)

1) I/O plate lime green - HDAudio chip on
motherboard
- actual damage
(unlikely) ? replace motherboard

2) Faceplate, audio soundcard - Audio chip on
soundcard
- actual damage
(unlikely) ? replace plugin soundcard

3) USB audio dongle (two jack) - Audio chip
inside dongle
- actual damage
(unlikely) ? replace dongle

First generation digital sound, ran at
6mbit/sec over
a coaxial cable. It was called S'PDIF. It
carried stereo
in perhaps 24bit, or could carry AC3 5.1
compressed (picked
right off a movie DVD). The copper version of
S'PDIF used
the coax cable, 1 volt amplitude, transformer
isolated (to
avoid ground differences when cabling up). The
optical
version was called TOSLink, used a red LED
lightsource,
and cheap dental plastic fiber cable.

S'PDIF could come from (1) and use a stubby I/O
plate addon
or be a jack on the PC. I don't know if having
it on (2) or
(3) was common. On motherboards, a square
connector with
a rubber cover can be a TOSLink digital coming
from (1).

Then came HDMI audio. At first, HDMI was little
better than
a different connector on DVI. If you had an old
enough
computer, it wasn't really HDMI, and it also
didn't have
audio as a result. DVI doesn't have audio. HDMI
made by
bodging a DVI signal, doesn't have audio
capability either.

Then we had HDMI, and it still didn't have
audio. But at
least the cable clock went from 165MHz max DVI
clock
to 330MHz HDMI clock. It was "real" HDMI only
in the
sense that it had broken its bonds and limits
with DVI.

The first digital audio on HDMI was probably on
video
cards. They put an S'PDIF connector (!) on the
top edge
of NVidia cards for example. The cable might
have been
a couple pins. And a wire went to the S'PDIF
three pin or
so, mobo header connector. That was a kind of
"passthru audio",
digital in form. The 6mbit/sec S'PDIF was then
converted
into 7.1 LPCM (= no compression) on HDMI. The
Windows
sound would make a mention of "digital" and
sometimes
"AMD, NVidia, Intel" or similar branding. Intel
having
killed off a lot of other potential mobo video
sources.

The last several standards versions of HDMI,
they're
being delivered right from the video card,
without
"passthru". No info is available on the CODEC
logic
block in the GPU on the video card. One version
used
a RealTek driver, implying Realtek sold some IP
(intellectual property) for an HDAudio sound
chip
for inclusion in the GPU. As I don't think a
48-pin
HDAudio chip has been spotted on the video
card.

*******

Now, your audio has flown the coop, because of
a software
issue. It means some service has taken a ****.
Or,
perhaps you removed a service responsible for
"Audio Endpoint" as instructed by the
blackviper.com
website. I've had to scrounge through Google
before,
to find mention of what service that is, but I
didn't
keep notes. If you've "blackvipered" this
setup,
then now is a good time to mention it :-) I
won't
give you a lot of hell for this, as it's easy
to be
tricked into doing that stuff based on Internet
info.
Blackviper site, tells you how to disable a lot
of
services (I suppose, a topic popular with rabid
gamers with 32GB machines, out to save 3 bytes
by
turning off a service).

Now, all that guff I typed out in the first
section
above, will come in handy. This article shows
how
to select and set a "Default" audio source in
Windows 10.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

ASUS VE278 (NVidia High Definition Audio)

Well, I'm not sure exactly that what one is :-)
I looked it up, and that's the name of an LCD
monitor
with speakers in it. So that HDMI port gained
the name
of the monitor when the monitor got plugged in.
Neat.

You can reset the audio setting to make your
named
monitor (the TV set), the output for sound if
you
want.

That would be the first step, before the panic
sets in.
No need (yet) to be buying hardware :-) If the
video card outputs, HDMI connectors, are not
mentioned
at all, then I'd check Device Manager
(devmgmt.msc) and
see see if any yellow marks are present,
indicating
a driver got updated by Microsoft and is no
longer
loading properly.

1) Check settings. Even setting a volume to
zero
somewhere can kill sound. Check that a mute
button
hasn't been pressed (mute = 0 volume), or
that the
volume dial or slider is set to zero.

Make sure the Default audio output is set
to the TV.

Check Device Manager for yellow marks. Note
any
code (Code 10, Code 22 etc). You can even
go into
Device Manager and select Disable for a
piece of
hardware, and it won't look "damaged" at
all. That's
why you have to check stuff in there.

2) Think about any BlackVipering you've been
doing.
The turning off of (unrelated!) services
can kill audio.
I didn't believe that was possible, until
someone
managed to do it. The audio service did not
list the
Dependency in the Dependency tab. And that
is when I
first learned that the Dependency tab is
not computed by
software, but is statically entered by
(mistake making)
humans at MSFT.

3) You would need to spend considerable time
working
on (1) and (2), before concluding it was
hardware.
And in particular, it's highly highly
unlikely that
a logic block in the GPU blew up. If the
computer
image on the TV screen was a mess, it would
be easy
to see how decoding audio from that stream
could be
difficult. Since you make no mention of
substandard
or destroyed video quality, then that's
part of the
highly highly unlikely part. The sound just
can't fail.
Maybe if the speaker amp blew out on the TV
set :-) ...

Paul


Or, he could try reinstalling the audio drivers
and/or audio codecs.

Paul[_28_] November 5th 20 02:33 PM

problem with audio - question
 
Steve Hough wrote:


Or, he could try reinstalling the audio drivers and/or audio codecs.


On my NVidia card, when the driver installs, there's usually a folder
with the related materials. Clicking an INF, you could try "install"
from there. This folder contains the audio part, of the video card driver.

https://i.postimg.cc/brDwSqjx/audio-driver.gif

Paul

Flasherly[_2_] November 5th 20 07:42 PM

problem with audio - question
 
On Thu, 5 Nov 2020 04:28:01 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the current
problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while googling that
indicated the problem will actually involve the on-board graphics chip
because that's the chip that combines the audio and video signals to
the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?



https://mobilespecs.net/motherboard/...150M-A_D3.html

Are you sure you have Integrated Graphics, or is the D3 above specific
to a entirely different board revision?

The graphics chip is combined to, nevertheless, through HDMI dedicated
sound strobes, from the Realtek ALC887 digital sound output.

If the afore D3 instance say were correct, then that board lists
itself for D-Sub supported. From the BIOS -- if not DISPLAY
Auto-Detect or it actually worked (some get "confused" and need a
jumper-reset), and were then a VGA monitor instead isntalled over HDMI
(invented ostensibly for industry copyright exclusions). There's
clearly no sound on a VGA cable, thus requiring the soundboard speaker
output hookups for any sound at all -- unless the MB is supportive of
two monitors, HDMI & VGA/D-Sub simultaneously, where optionally sound
may be routed through either or both the backpannel plugs/jacks or the
HDMI.

Routing sound can get tricky in a somewhat complexity given sound
software option settings. Click the wrong button or a wrong
association -- whoops!: No Sound!

Welcome to troubleshooting, which may involve meticulously going over
the driver stages for when, just a moment ago, it was last working --
possibly over and over until identifying what and how unwelcome
changes might occur. Without which chalk it up to magic in case it
ever returns to normal operations.

Yes[_2_] November 5th 20 09:19 PM

problem with audio - question
 
Flasherly wrote:

On Thu, 5 Nov 2020 04:28:01 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the current
problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while googling that
indicated the problem will actually involve the on-board graphics
chip because that's the chip that combines the audio and video
signals to the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?



https://mobilespecs.net/motherboard/...150M-A_D3.html

Are you sure you have Integrated Graphics, or is the D3 above specific
to a entirely different board revision?

The graphics chip is combined to, nevertheless, through HDMI dedicated
sound strobes, from the Realtek ALC887 digital sound output.

If the afore D3 instance say were correct, then that board lists
itself for D-Sub supported. From the BIOS -- if not DISPLAY
Auto-Detect or it actually worked (some get "confused" and need a
jumper-reset), and were then a VGA monitor instead isntalled over HDMI
(invented ostensibly for industry copyright exclusions). There's
clearly no sound on a VGA cable, thus requiring the soundboard speaker
output hookups for any sound at all -- unless the MB is supportive of
two monitors, HDMI & VGA/D-Sub simultaneously, where optionally sound
may be routed through either or both the backpannel plugs/jacks or the
HDMI.

Routing sound can get tricky in a somewhat complexity given sound
software option settings. Click the wrong button or a wrong
association -- whoops!: No Sound!

Welcome to troubleshooting, which may involve meticulously going over
the driver stages for when, just a moment ago, it was last working --
possibly over and over until identifying what and how unwelcome
changes might occur. Without which chalk it up to magic in case it
ever returns to normal operations.


Wish there were magic to troubleshoot :-) I'm not sure how to give you
more useful info. My pc hardware is very minimal, and I built it with
no bells and whistles. I use the onboard graphics chip and audio chip
on the mobo instead of dedicated video and sound cards. I connect the
pc to my TV via HDMI and use the TV for the A/V.

Until yesterday, the only "problem" I had observed was that once in
awhile the signal from the pc - both audio and video - would 'blank
out" (the screen on the Roku TV would go black and there would be no
sound. Literally after about a second or so A/V feed resumed and there
was no evidence that the pc rebooted or suffered a meltdown. The TV
shows no abnomal or unexpected problems and it's software is up to
date. I posted that problem a few weeks ago in this group, but my
troubleshooting efforts failed, and I chose to bite the bullet and
treat it as a problem requiring more skills and tools that what I could
bring to the table.

My backup plan for this problem is to either buy a replacement mobo or
as a person showing very little common cents buy a cheap laptop or
desktop or maybe even a Raspberry Pi 4. I use this pc for surfing and
for watching YouTube videos and anime titles so I don't think I need a
mid range much less high end build given what I'm using it for.

John

Yes[_2_] November 5th 20 09:44 PM

problem with audio - question
 
Steve Hough wrote:

Paul was thinking very hard :
Yes wrote:
I have an Asus B150-M-A mobo with an integrated graphics chip and
Realtek ALC887 codec. I connect it via HDMI cable to my living
room TV when I want to use the pc. It's worked very well for my
needs (web surfing and anime videos). Today, the audio stopped
working. The videos works.

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the
current problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while
googling that indicated the problem will actually involve the
on-board graphics chip because that's the chip that combines the
audio and video signals to the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?

When everything is doee, I just want to get back to the way
things were before - use the pc to surf and watch stuff and
display it using the TV as my monitor like I've been doing.
Obviously, buying a new mobo might solve my problem, but would
buying a video card or a sound card fix my problem?

Thanks,

John


It's a good thing you caught that.

Analog sound comes from a different place than digital sound.

Examples of analog sound sources (lime green colored 1/8" jack)

1) I/O plate lime green - HDAudio chip on motherboard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
motherboard

2) Faceplate, audio soundcard - Audio chip on soundcard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
plugin soundcard

3) USB audio dongle (two jack) - Audio chip inside dongle
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
dongle

First generation digital sound, ran at 6mbit/sec over
a coaxial cable. It was called S'PDIF. It carried stereo
in perhaps 24bit, or could carry AC3 5.1 compressed (picked
right off a movie DVD). The copper version of S'PDIF used
the coax cable, 1 volt amplitude, transformer isolated (to
avoid ground differences when cabling up). The optical
version was called TOSLink, used a red LED lightsource,
and cheap dental plastic fiber cable.

S'PDIF could come from (1) and use a stubby I/O plate addon
or be a jack on the PC. I don't know if having it on (2) or
(3) was common. On motherboards, a square connector with
a rubber cover can be a TOSLink digital coming from (1).

Then came HDMI audio. At first, HDMI was little better than
a different connector on DVI. If you had an old enough
computer, it wasn't really HDMI, and it also didn't have
audio as a result. DVI doesn't have audio. HDMI made by
bodging a DVI signal, doesn't have audio capability either.

Then we had HDMI, and it still didn't have audio. But at
least the cable clock went from 165MHz max DVI clock
to 330MHz HDMI clock. It was "real" HDMI only in the
sense that it had broken its bonds and limits with DVI.

The first digital audio on HDMI was probably on video
cards. They put an S'PDIF connector (!) on the top edge
of NVidia cards for example. The cable might have been
a couple pins. And a wire went to the S'PDIF three pin or
so, mobo header connector. That was a kind of "passthru audio",
digital in form. The 6mbit/sec S'PDIF was then converted
into 7.1 LPCM (= no compression) on HDMI. The Windows
sound would make a mention of "digital" and sometimes
"AMD, NVidia, Intel" or similar branding. Intel having
killed off a lot of other potential mobo video sources.

The last several standards versions of HDMI, they're
being delivered right from the video card, without
"passthru". No info is available on the CODEC logic
block in the GPU on the video card. One version used
a RealTek driver, implying Realtek sold some IP
(intellectual property) for an HDAudio sound chip
for inclusion in the GPU. As I don't think a 48-pin
HDAudio chip has been spotted on the video card.

*******

Now, your audio has flown the coop, because of a software
issue. It means some service has taken a ****. Or,
perhaps you removed a service responsible for
"Audio Endpoint" as instructed by the blackviper.com
website. I've had to scrounge through Google before,
to find mention of what service that is, but I didn't
keep notes. If you've "blackvipered" this setup,
then now is a good time to mention it :-) I won't
give you a lot of hell for this, as it's easy to be
tricked into doing that stuff based on Internet info.
Blackviper site, tells you how to disable a lot of
services (I suppose, a topic popular with rabid
gamers with 32GB machines, out to save 3 bytes by
turning off a service).

Now, all that guff I typed out in the first section
above, will come in handy. This article shows how
to select and set a "Default" audio source in Windows 10.


https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

ASUS VE278 (NVidia High Definition Audio)

Well, I'm not sure exactly that what one is :-)
I looked it up, and that's the name of an LCD monitor
with speakers in it. So that HDMI port gained the name
of the monitor when the monitor got plugged in. Neat.

You can reset the audio setting to make your named
monitor (the TV set), the output for sound if you
want.

That would be the first step, before the panic sets in.
No need (yet) to be buying hardware :-) If the
video card outputs, HDMI connectors, are not mentioned
at all, then I'd check Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) and
see see if any yellow marks are present, indicating
a driver got updated by Microsoft and is no longer
loading properly.

1) Check settings. Even setting a volume to zero
somewhere can kill sound. Check that a mute button
hasn't been pressed (mute = 0 volume), or that the
volume dial or slider is set to zero.

Make sure the Default audio output is set to the TV.

Check Device Manager for yellow marks. Note any
code (Code 10, Code 22 etc). You can even go into
Device Manager and select Disable for a piece of
hardware, and it won't look "damaged" at all. That's
why you have to check stuff in there.

2) Think about any BlackVipering you've been doing.
The turning off of (unrelated!) services can kill audio.
I didn't believe that was possible, until someone
managed to do it. The audio service did not list the
Dependency in the Dependency tab. And that is when I
first learned that the Dependency tab is not computed by
software, but is statically entered by (mistake making)
humans at MSFT.

3) You would need to spend considerable time working
on (1) and (2), before concluding it was hardware.
And in particular, it's highly highly unlikely that
a logic block in the GPU blew up. If the computer
image on the TV screen was a mess, it would be easy
to see how decoding audio from that stream could be
difficult. Since you make no mention of substandard
or destroyed video quality, then that's part of the
highly highly unlikely part. The sound just can't fail.
Maybe if the speaker amp blew out on the TV set :-) ...

Paul


Or, he could try reinstalling the audio drivers and/or audio codecs.


Tried that after posting, but ran into a dead end. Googling, the
recommendations were to go to device manager and find the device. I
couldn't find any device underneath sound or the other category
involving sound/video.

Next, ran the Hardware Wizard (reached via Windows 10 options
underneath Device Manager). The wizard failed to find any 'new'
hardware. Last thing I did last night was to go to RealTek's web site,
d/l the most current driver they had for my O/S installed it and
rebooted. That s/w reported a successful install, but even after
rebooting I still had the same problem - I could watch something but
not hear anything.

My testing involved playing a YouTube video on my pc to see what
happened. Video worked but no sound. I used my TV (Roku TV) - it
doubles as the monitor and audio for my pc - to find that same video
and play it. Using the Roku TV, the YouTube video played and I could
listen to audio of the video. The TV showed no problems playing the
A/V of the YouTube video. So I concluded that the problem lies with my
pc and not affected by the Roku TV.

I suppose the last ditch effort I could make would be to install some
version of linux to see if it could fix my problem. If so, I guess I
could then just re-install Windows 10 if the audio resumed working
under linux. Not particularly enamored doing that :-(

John

Yes[_2_] November 5th 20 10:18 PM

problem with audio - question
 
Paul wrote:

Yes wrote:
I have an Asus B150-M-A mobo with an integrated graphics chip and
Realtek ALC887 codec. I connect it via HDMI cable to my living
room TV when I want to use the pc. It's worked very well for my
needs (web surfing and anime videos). Today, the audio stopped
working. The videos works.

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the current
problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while googling that
indicated the problem will actually involve the on-board graphics
chip because that's the chip that combines the audio and video
signals to the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?

When everything is doee, I just want to get back to the way things
were before - use the pc to surf and watch stuff and display it
using the TV as my monitor like I've been doing. Obviously, buying
a new mobo might solve my problem, but would buying a video card or
a sound card fix my problem?

Thanks,

John


It's a good thing you caught that.

Analog sound comes from a different place than digital sound.

Examples of analog sound sources (lime green colored 1/8" jack)

1) I/O plate lime green - HDAudio chip on motherboard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
motherboard

2) Faceplate, audio soundcard - Audio chip on soundcard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
plugin soundcard

3) USB audio dongle (two jack) - Audio chip inside dongle
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
dongle

First generation digital sound, ran at 6mbit/sec over
a coaxial cable. It was called S'PDIF. It carried stereo
in perhaps 24bit, or could carry AC3 5.1 compressed (picked
right off a movie DVD). The copper version of S'PDIF used
the coax cable, 1 volt amplitude, transformer isolated (to
avoid ground differences when cabling up). The optical
version was called TOSLink, used a red LED lightsource,
and cheap dental plastic fiber cable.

S'PDIF could come from (1) and use a stubby I/O plate addon
or be a jack on the PC. I don't know if having it on (2) or
(3) was common. On motherboards, a square connector with
a rubber cover can be a TOSLink digital coming from (1).

Then came HDMI audio. At first, HDMI was little better than
a different connector on DVI. If you had an old enough
computer, it wasn't really HDMI, and it also didn't have
audio as a result. DVI doesn't have audio. HDMI made by
bodging a DVI signal, doesn't have audio capability either.

Then we had HDMI, and it still didn't have audio. But at
least the cable clock went from 165MHz max DVI clock
to 330MHz HDMI clock. It was "real" HDMI only in the
sense that it had broken its bonds and limits with DVI.

The first digital audio on HDMI was probably on video
cards. They put an S'PDIF connector (!) on the top edge
of NVidia cards for example. The cable might have been
a couple pins. And a wire went to the S'PDIF three pin or
so, mobo header connector. That was a kind of "passthru audio",
digital in form. The 6mbit/sec S'PDIF was then converted
into 7.1 LPCM (= no compression) on HDMI. The Windows
sound would make a mention of "digital" and sometimes
"AMD, NVidia, Intel" or similar branding. Intel having
killed off a lot of other potential mobo video sources.

The last several standards versions of HDMI, they're
being delivered right from the video card, without
"passthru". No info is available on the CODEC logic
block in the GPU on the video card. One version used
a RealTek driver, implying Realtek sold some IP
(intellectual property) for an HDAudio sound chip
for inclusion in the GPU. As I don't think a 48-pin
HDAudio chip has been spotted on the video card.

*******

Now, your audio has flown the coop, because of a software
issue. It means some service has taken a ****. Or,
perhaps you removed a service responsible for
"Audio Endpoint" as instructed by the blackviper.com
website. I've had to scrounge through Google before,
to find mention of what service that is, but I didn't
keep notes. If you've "blackvipered" this setup,
then now is a good time to mention it :-) I won't
give you a lot of hell for this, as it's easy to be
tricked into doing that stuff based on Internet info.
Blackviper site, tells you how to disable a lot of
services (I suppose, a topic popular with rabid
gamers with 32GB machines, out to save 3 bytes by
turning off a service).

Now, all that guff I typed out in the first section
above, will come in handy. This article shows how
to select and set a "Default" audio source in Windows 10.


https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

ASUS VE278 (NVidia High Definition Audio)

Well, I'm not sure exactly that what one is :-)
I looked it up, and that's the name of an LCD monitor
with speakers in it. So that HDMI port gained the name
of the monitor when the monitor got plugged in. Neat.

You can reset the audio setting to make your named
monitor (the TV set), the output for sound if you
want.

That would be the first step, before the panic sets in.
No need (yet) to be buying hardware :-) If the
video card outputs, HDMI connectors, are not mentioned
at all, then I'd check Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) and
see see if any yellow marks are present, indicating
a driver got updated by Microsoft and is no longer
loading properly.

1) Check settings. Even setting a volume to zero
somewhere can kill sound. Check that a mute button
hasn't been pressed (mute = 0 volume), or that the
volume dial or slider is set to zero.

Make sure the Default audio output is set to the TV.

Check Device Manager for yellow marks. Note any
code (Code 10, Code 22 etc). You can even go into
Device Manager and select Disable for a piece of
hardware, and it won't look "damaged" at all. That's
why you have to check stuff in there.

2) Think about any BlackVipering you've been doing.
The turning off of (unrelated!) services can kill audio.
I didn't believe that was possible, until someone
managed to do it. The audio service did not list the
Dependency in the Dependency tab. And that is when I
first learned that the Dependency tab is not computed by
software, but is statically entered by (mistake making)
humans at MSFT.

3) You would need to spend considerable time working
on (1) and (2), before concluding it was hardware.
And in particular, it's highly highly unlikely that
a logic block in the GPU blew up. If the computer
image on the TV screen was a mess, it would be easy
to see how decoding audio from that stream could be
difficult. Since you make no mention of substandard
or destroyed video quality, then that's part of the
highly highly unlikely part. The sound just can't fail.
Maybe if the speaker amp blew out on the TV set :-) ...

Paul


Thank you. I was falling asleep when I read your post, so am just now
responding when I can be more coherent :-)

If I understand you right, then the problem lies with the pc hardware.
When I built this pc, I went with a minimalist build. I chose the mobo
because of the add-on graphics chip and audio capability. I could use
an HDMI cable to connect the pc to my TV and use the TV (with its
built-in speakers) to watch stuff. As reported, the TV sounds fine and
the images displayed look good. Nor does the display of the video from
the pc on the TV show any problems like you mentioned.

I'm trying to understand my options at this point with the proviso that
I want to be able to listen to the content, not just watch it :-) It
seems they a
1. replace the mobo itself
2. replace the pc build with perhaps a pre-built desktop or laptop
3. work around the existing problem on the mobo by adding a discrete
graphics card

If I try option 3, is that just wishful thinking on my part? I'm not
very interested in it if all it means is that I'm just kicking the can
down the road wasting my time and money on something that will
resurface.

John



Paul[_28_] November 5th 20 10:28 PM

problem with audio - question
 
Yes wrote:
Steve Hough wrote:

Paul was thinking very hard :
Yes wrote:
I have an Asus B150-M-A mobo with an integrated graphics chip and
Realtek ALC887 codec. I connect it via HDMI cable to my living
room TV when I want to use the pc. It's worked very well for my
needs (web surfing and anime videos). Today, the audio stopped
working. The videos works.

At first I was thinking buy a cheap sound card because the
current problem is no sound, but I ran across a comment while
googling that indicated the problem will actually involve the
on-board graphics chip because that's the chip that combines the
audio and video signals to the TV via HDMI. Is this correct?

When everything is doee, I just want to get back to the way
things were before - use the pc to surf and watch stuff and
display it using the TV as my monitor like I've been doing.
Obviously, buying a new mobo might solve my problem, but would
buying a video card or a sound card fix my problem?

Thanks,

John
It's a good thing you caught that.

Analog sound comes from a different place than digital sound.

Examples of analog sound sources (lime green colored 1/8" jack)

1) I/O plate lime green - HDAudio chip on motherboard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
motherboard

2) Faceplate, audio soundcard - Audio chip on soundcard
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
plugin soundcard

3) USB audio dongle (two jack) - Audio chip inside dongle
- actual damage (unlikely) ? replace
dongle

First generation digital sound, ran at 6mbit/sec over
a coaxial cable. It was called S'PDIF. It carried stereo
in perhaps 24bit, or could carry AC3 5.1 compressed (picked
right off a movie DVD). The copper version of S'PDIF used
the coax cable, 1 volt amplitude, transformer isolated (to
avoid ground differences when cabling up). The optical
version was called TOSLink, used a red LED lightsource,
and cheap dental plastic fiber cable.

S'PDIF could come from (1) and use a stubby I/O plate addon
or be a jack on the PC. I don't know if having it on (2) or
(3) was common. On motherboards, a square connector with
a rubber cover can be a TOSLink digital coming from (1).

Then came HDMI audio. At first, HDMI was little better than
a different connector on DVI. If you had an old enough
computer, it wasn't really HDMI, and it also didn't have
audio as a result. DVI doesn't have audio. HDMI made by
bodging a DVI signal, doesn't have audio capability either.

Then we had HDMI, and it still didn't have audio. But at
least the cable clock went from 165MHz max DVI clock
to 330MHz HDMI clock. It was "real" HDMI only in the
sense that it had broken its bonds and limits with DVI.

The first digital audio on HDMI was probably on video
cards. They put an S'PDIF connector (!) on the top edge
of NVidia cards for example. The cable might have been
a couple pins. And a wire went to the S'PDIF three pin or
so, mobo header connector. That was a kind of "passthru audio",
digital in form. The 6mbit/sec S'PDIF was then converted
into 7.1 LPCM (= no compression) on HDMI. The Windows
sound would make a mention of "digital" and sometimes
"AMD, NVidia, Intel" or similar branding. Intel having
killed off a lot of other potential mobo video sources.

The last several standards versions of HDMI, they're
being delivered right from the video card, without
"passthru". No info is available on the CODEC logic
block in the GPU on the video card. One version used
a RealTek driver, implying Realtek sold some IP
(intellectual property) for an HDAudio sound chip
for inclusion in the GPU. As I don't think a 48-pin
HDAudio chip has been spotted on the video card.

*******

Now, your audio has flown the coop, because of a software
issue. It means some service has taken a ****. Or,
perhaps you removed a service responsible for
"Audio Endpoint" as instructed by the blackviper.com
website. I've had to scrounge through Google before,
to find mention of what service that is, but I didn't
keep notes. If you've "blackvipered" this setup,
then now is a good time to mention it :-) I won't
give you a lot of hell for this, as it's easy to be
tricked into doing that stuff based on Internet info.
Blackviper site, tells you how to disable a lot of
services (I suppose, a topic popular with rabid
gamers with 32GB machines, out to save 3 bytes by
turning off a service).

Now, all that guff I typed out in the first section
above, will come in handy. This article shows how
to select and set a "Default" audio source in Windows 10.


https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html
ASUS VE278 (NVidia High Definition Audio)

Well, I'm not sure exactly that what one is :-)
I looked it up, and that's the name of an LCD monitor
with speakers in it. So that HDMI port gained the name
of the monitor when the monitor got plugged in. Neat.

You can reset the audio setting to make your named
monitor (the TV set), the output for sound if you
want.

That would be the first step, before the panic sets in.
No need (yet) to be buying hardware :-) If the
video card outputs, HDMI connectors, are not mentioned
at all, then I'd check Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) and
see see if any yellow marks are present, indicating
a driver got updated by Microsoft and is no longer
loading properly.

1) Check settings. Even setting a volume to zero
somewhere can kill sound. Check that a mute button
hasn't been pressed (mute = 0 volume), or that the
volume dial or slider is set to zero.

Make sure the Default audio output is set to the TV.

Check Device Manager for yellow marks. Note any
code (Code 10, Code 22 etc). You can even go into
Device Manager and select Disable for a piece of
hardware, and it won't look "damaged" at all. That's
why you have to check stuff in there.

2) Think about any BlackVipering you've been doing.
The turning off of (unrelated!) services can kill audio.
I didn't believe that was possible, until someone
managed to do it. The audio service did not list the
Dependency in the Dependency tab. And that is when I
first learned that the Dependency tab is not computed by
software, but is statically entered by (mistake making)
humans at MSFT.

3) You would need to spend considerable time working
on (1) and (2), before concluding it was hardware.
And in particular, it's highly highly unlikely that
a logic block in the GPU blew up. If the computer
image on the TV screen was a mess, it would be easy
to see how decoding audio from that stream could be
difficult. Since you make no mention of substandard
or destroyed video quality, then that's part of the
highly highly unlikely part. The sound just can't fail.
Maybe if the speaker amp blew out on the TV set :-) ...

Paul

Or, he could try reinstalling the audio drivers and/or audio codecs.


Tried that after posting, but ran into a dead end. Googling, the
recommendations were to go to device manager and find the device. I
couldn't find any device underneath sound or the other category
involving sound/video.

Next, ran the Hardware Wizard (reached via Windows 10 options
underneath Device Manager). The wizard failed to find any 'new'
hardware. Last thing I did last night was to go to RealTek's web site,
d/l the most current driver they had for my O/S installed it and
rebooted. That s/w reported a successful install, but even after
rebooting I still had the same problem - I could watch something but
not hear anything.

My testing involved playing a YouTube video on my pc to see what
happened. Video worked but no sound. I used my TV (Roku TV) - it
doubles as the monitor and audio for my pc - to find that same video
and play it. Using the Roku TV, the YouTube video played and I could
listen to audio of the video. The TV showed no problems playing the
A/V of the YouTube video. So I concluded that the problem lies with my
pc and not affected by the Roku TV.

I suppose the last ditch effort I could make would be to install some
version of linux to see if it could fix my problem. If so, I guess I
could then just re-install Windows 10 if the audio resumed working
under linux. Not particularly enamored doing that :-(

John


If the audio is traveling over the HDMI cable,
a GPU is driving that, and you need the *audio*
driver inside the GPU driver package to restore
sound over HDMI.

Here is the picture again.

https://i.postimg.cc/brDwSqjx/audio-driver.gif

See the "nvhda.inf" ?

Search for that on your PC, right click it, select "Install"
from the top of the right-click menu.

I don't know what drives your HDMI cable as a GPU.

That example picture is for my plugin NVidia video card.

It could even be Intel video for that matter (a GPU
inside the CPU package), and then you need an
Intel driver for the HDMI cable and the audio on it.

******* Intel digital audio example *******

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft...086%26DEV_2805

Intel Corporation - MEDIA - 4/26/2018 12:00:00 AM - 6.16.0.3208
Windows 10, version 1809 and later, Servicing Drivers
Drivers (Sound) 4/25/2018 6.16.0.3208 230 KB

And the file has "intcdaud" in the name, which should likely be parsed
as stock ticker INTC Digital Audio. It's a CAB file. I like to open
these downloads with 7ZIP from www.7-zip.org and do "Extract" into
the nearest convenient empty folder.

******* Intel digital audio example *******

Since I don't know exactly what I'm dealing with,
these will remain for the moment, "examples".

And don't switch to Linux to test this. Of course
it's going to work. Then you have to climb back on
your horse and install Windows 10 again. This is
just "broken software", and sooner or later,
you're going to fix it, right ? Think positive.

I've been defeated by drivers before. I had to
reinstall Win2K once, because I didn't practice "good hygiene"
with my video drivers. I had Matrox, NVidia, and ATI
drivers in the machine at the same time. And AGP Texture
acceleration stopped working, my games were broke. And I
tried every "cleaner" on the face of the earth, and
could not get it fixed. That required a reinstall, to
make sure no remnants of any evil spirits were
left in the machine :-) So, yeah, sometimes you
get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.
Right now, you're dealing with a rabbit, not a
bear.

Paul

Flasherly[_2_] November 6th 20 12:49 AM

problem with audio - question
 
On Thu, 5 Nov 2020 20:19:14 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

My backup plan for this problem is to either buy a replacement mobo or
as a person showing very little common cents buy a cheap laptop or
desktop or maybe even a Raspberry Pi 4. I use this pc for surfing and
for watching YouTube videos and anime titles so I don't think I need a
mid range much less high end build given what I'm using it for.



https://mobilespecs.net/motherboard/...150M-A_D3.html

Presuming your MB above also lists for 6 SATA ports. As easy to
install a couple $20/US, 128G SSDs.

Put IBM/MSDOS, W-XP, Linux, whatever, all on one, the first BIOS boot
drive, and then load this also into the MBR (found on HIRENS, perhaps
an earlier version):

Smart Boot Manager 3.7.1 Installer Copyright (C) 2000 Suzhe, Lonius
This is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY!

With it, a Boot Arbitrator, you can "point" to both Windows 7 or
(untested to say) Window 10 on another drive(s) or possibly each to
their own. (Or two of the same for an OS and another possible,
"Virgin, never yet been on the WEB, I swear to Mary working backup" --
a similar construct to a "working" binary image, provided installs are
later, to their own resource specificity and isolated, standalone when
possible, like of course the binary image(s) -- everything then being
apart, as much for a rule possible, from the OS. It's the only sane
way, at that level, to keep everything about the OS small enough for a
fast creation/rewrite without, say, an obvious example of 7G of
ancillary programs later along installed, otherwise, into one bloated
pig of an OS.)

$40 for two SSDs makes it way cheaper than the options you mentioned.
I don't want, either, to troubleshoot hardware device drivers or,
generally, programs. Not while I can slip merrily along my way down
the slimy edges of Kludge Ave. All a binary image ensures is my ass is
covered should something "break" to threaten a state of perfect
composure -- sound goes in a crazy loop from the Outer Limits, which
mine has, or no sound -- so and such that, when (beyond a reboot and
initialize of drivers), that I now do have binary OS images backups
that predate a current problem.

If that doesn't work, (for me and my brother my ass), at least then I
do know highly to suspect -- Hardware Issues, which nonetheless can
and may tend to show up importunely, say, a couple years into and past
a newly everything build/installed on right proper Command Centre
Computer.


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