Yes presented the following explanation :
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

But have you actually tried removing and
reinstalling the audio drivers? Try installing
new audio codecs. In the windows sound applet, is
the computer switched to send audio to your TV?