A computer components & hardware forum. HardwareBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » HardwareBanter forum » General Hardware & Peripherals » Homebuilt PC's
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

problem with audio - question



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #11  
Old November 6th 20, 01:35 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default problem with audio - question

Yes wrote:

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


Asus B150-M-A

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboa...Desk_Download/

VGA

Version 21.20.16.4542 2016/12/14 236.15 MBytes

Intel_Graphics_Accelerator_Driver
support win7_64/Win8.1_64/Win10_64

That has INTCDAud in it, the digital audio for "Intel GPU HDMI sound".

You might also want to test the TV set, with a known-working
HDMI source. Say, a BD settop player with HDMI output, could
be used to test the TV Audio.

And that's if you're using the HDMI connector on the
motherboard I/O plate area.

*******

The PC I'm on here, has a $20 pair of stereo computer speakers
(115VAC powered), rocking 2W of audio output. That's plugged
into the green connector on the back of the PC. And that
has provided years of faithful service (once I took it apart
and repaired a cold solder joint on the speaker PCB).

My other PC, has a home-made amp (rocking about 2W of usable
power), and a pair of bookshelf speakers for output.

No fancy HDMI for me. No sound bar. No Dolby ATMOS.

Paul
  #12  
Old November 14th 20, 01:58 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yes[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 105
Default problem with audio - question

Paul wrote:

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


Sorry for the delay. Despite your advice, I made a bootable Linux Mint
USB to test if my audio problem was due to a problem on the hardware.
After booting my pc into linux, I played some videos from YouTube and
another source. Both audio and video worked without a hitch, so I
conclude that my problem is solely related to software and not to
hardware.

John
  #13  
Old November 14th 20, 12:20 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Steve Hough
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default problem with audio - question

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?
  #14  
Old November 14th 20, 04:23 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Patrick[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9
Default problem with audio - question

On 14/11/2020 00:58, Yes wrote:
so I
conclude that my problem is solely related to software and not to
hardware.

John


Does clicking on the Speaker Icon show a Volume slider?

If Volume slider IS shown, then RIGHT-click the Speaker icon and click
'Open Sound settings'.

In 'Sound Settings' check that you have the correct Sound Output
selected (perhaps try each Output option in turn).


 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Question on P5K audio connectors. algae Asus Motherboards 4 July 8th 07 03:01 PM
Audio/surround question [email protected] Homebuilt PC's 7 January 2nd 07 07:56 AM
Audio CD SP2 question Nomad Homebuilt PC's 3 October 4th 04 09:14 AM
Bad audio problem and audio mpeg recording problem bg Ati Videocards 1 September 29th 03 01:17 AM
TV Tuner, TV audio question Nicholes Tse Ati Videocards 1 July 3rd 03 03:31 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 12:07 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 HardwareBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.