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Chrispy_
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HDMI audio equaliser?

Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:34 pm

Hey all. I am trying to declutter the media centre at home and I'm pretty happy using My HDTV (of all things) as an AV hub for everythng. Asides from removing a whole load of cables, I'm allowing the TV remote to control most of the other devices this way because the amp, Blu-ray, XBox and HTPC all use an HDMI cable to communicate bi-directionally with the TV.

So, the basic setup is this (excuse my asscii):

[Radeon 7800 HDMI port] ―――――┐
[Xbox 360 HDMI port]――――――[HDTV]――――[Amplifier/Decoder]════[Speakers]
[BD/DVD player HDMI port]――――┘

Now the amp is old and doesn't allow any equaliser presets in anything except stereo mode, which nukes three of the five speakers and disables DTS/Dolby decoding from the Blu-ray player, so that option is out.

However, (like most sub+satellite setups) it's boomy on the bass and slighly weak for midrange warmth by default; I have previously compensated for this slightly by using software equalisers to reduce the sub-80Hz levels and anything north of about 1.5KHz progressively, either with my old Creative drivers or the Realtek sound manager.

Now that I have to run through the Radeon's HDMI port to get picture and sound to the TV over HDMI, I have all audio running through an AMD High Definition Audio Device. The only things I can do with it is Bass management/Room Correction/Loudness Equalisation, none of which actually allow me to edit the treble/bass levels independently.

  • Does this mean that the Radeon has a seperate, built-in sound codec as per the realtek on on the motherboard?
  • I assume the realtek HD audio is useless, since I'm not using the motherboard SPDIF/Analogue ports?
  • Is there any way to get an equaliser (even a simple one) for this AMD HD audio device?

At least, I assume I'm going to have to edit the sound characteristics at the PC end, since the HDTV's audio options are disabled when it's connected to external speakers.

Any help/advice appreciated; I'm fairly fussy about sound quality and speaker quality, but I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to HDMI audio :\
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cynan
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Re: HDMI audio equaliser?

Thu Nov 01, 2012 9:02 pm

Does this mean that the Radeon has a seperate, built-in sound codec as per the realtek on on the motherboard?


Yes. HDMI Video cards have their own audio device. As far as I know, these are Realtek devices (separate from the onbaord Realtek device on your motherboard). At least the HDMI audio driver is Realtek software: When Radeons first supported this config on the HD 4800 series, the HDMI audio device and drivers were still called "Realtek HDMI audio device".

I think Realtek still offers these device drivers on their website. They also have other software listed and perhaps one of them offers some rudimentary EQ adjustments. (when you click on the above link, you need to accept some Realtek user rights policy before you can navigate to the download page linked)

I personally haven't bothered with an EQ for my Radeon HDMI setup as my AV receiver does allow EQ adjustments. However, I'd also be interested to know if there was some general audio-device agnostic EQ software that could be used with the Realtek HDMI devices...
 
Chrispy_
Maximum Gerbil
Topic Author
Posts: 4670
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:49 pm
Location: Europe, most frequently London.

Re: HDMI audio equaliser?

Thu Nov 01, 2012 10:19 pm

Bah, the ATI HDMI driver ne worked pas. It was full of le fail :\

If I find anything in the next few days, I'll post it, otherwise I might just give up on HDMI-CEC for the HTPC and use the old SPDIF cable.
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cynan
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Re: HDMI audio equaliser?

Fri Nov 02, 2012 12:54 am

Désolé.

I did a quick search and found a thread on another forum with someone looking for the exact same thing - Realtek EQ settings for HDMI audio...

Here's a quote from the last entry:

For those of you that may have the problem I stated above (HDMI sound output still does not have equalizer after upgrading the realtek audio drivers):

Upgrade the ATI HDMI audio driver by downloading the driver off of the Realtek website. i.e. there are two driver downloads that you'll need, the Realtek driver set (currently R2.48) and the ATI HDMI driver which is posted on the same page (currently R2.42). ATI does not seem to have this driver, it is only available off the Realtek website.


So, from a quick glance it seems that you need to install other Realtek software in addition to the HDMI Audio Driver. Then again, the post is over 2 years old, so I don't know if this will work with current Radeons..

Here's the link to the last page of the thread. I didn't have time to follow it all, let alone test anything out. It gets kind of complicated... There's a link on the last page to another thread about changing registry settings that one poster claimed worked for them..

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