Dual Monitors with 5.1 Surround Sound on a PC

ArrogantSquirrelz · Nov 21, 2013

So I've made the decision of getting a 5.1 surround sound system. I'm not going the PC speakers route. Instead, I'm going the route of building a home audio system of my own. My relevant PC specs:
MSI 7970, water cooled
ASUS M5A99FX Pro
AMD 8350 Vishera, water cooled
2x ASUS VN247H-P 23.6" Monitors

Now I have a reference video card, so it has 1 DVI Port, 1 HDMI port, and 2 mini Displayports. I currently have my monitors through the HDMI and DVI ports. The way I'm understanding is that you need to hook in a surround sound receiver through HDMI via the video card. So in theory, I could get an HDMI to Mini Displayport cable and run a monitor with that cable, then use the receiver on the HDMI port of the video card.

So with that being said, would my video card be ABLE to handle 2 monitors and audio at the same time?

I appreciate your responses ahead of time!

ssddx · Nov 22, 2013

does the 7970 work for your current two monitors as-is?

if yes then i dont see why it wouldnt work just because you are exporting sound. the gpu doesnt do any sound processing (this is done by the cpu) it only adds the data onto the hdmi cable. there should be no performance loss at all.

by using a much longer loop for the one monitor (2 hdmi cables) i'd be more worried about having a slight delay on one compared to the other. i've never ran an unbalanced setup like that so i honestly cannot say for sure. its something to check out.

if (and its a big if since you probably wouldnt have an issue) you did have an issue you could always connect up to a receiver via spdif optical or spdif coax from your motherboard (or if it doesnt have those plugs get a cheap soundcard).

--

as far as what speakers or receiver to buy are you covered or were you looking for help with that as well?

if so you need to provide a budget, room size, what speaker size you want etc.

ArrogantSquirrelz · Nov 30, 2013

ssddx :

Sorry I didn't respond to this for so long. I ordered the MartinLogan MLT-2 5.1 set for $150, fully aware of the sub possibly being bad (I can RMA it through ML no problem). For the receiver I ordered a Harman Kardon AVR 1700.

Yes it works for the two monitors as is.

I think you're misunderstanding the cabling. I now have a monitor hooked up through DVI-HDMI, the receiver hooked up via HDMI, and the second monitor DisplayPort-HDMI. 3 different cables. Now my problem (Windows 7)...

My receiver is now showing up on my PC as a display. Sound still comes through, but my 2nd monitor is now made inactive. I tried setting it so the second monitor is active and the receiver is inactive, but that also cuts the sound. My receiver won't seem to switch to audio only, and I can't seem to convince the computer that it's not a monitor... Ideas? Basically I'm stuck with a monitor and a receiver right now rather than dual monitors.

ssddx · Nov 30, 2013

that issue you mentioned is why i did not suggest that as an option.

everything should work perfectly fine if you use two hdmi cables as i mentioned before.

or if you think there could be a delay issue then just use spdif output.

ArrogantSquirrelz · Nov 30, 2013

ssddx :

There is only 1 HDMI port on the video card.

ssddx · Nov 30, 2013

or use

1x dvi-to-hdmi cable
1x hdmi cable

same thing pretty much....

ssddx · Nov 30, 2013

or use

1x dvi-to-hdmi cable
1x hdmi cable

same thing pretty much....

ArrogantSquirrelz · Dec 1, 2013

ssddx :

What are you getting at? SPDIF doesn't provide true surround sound, and what you're suggesting would still only provide me with two devices.

Again, here's what I have, all from the video card:
HDMI to receiver, DisplayPort-HDMI Monitor 2, DVI-HDMI Monitor 1. Am I just doing it wrong? Should I be using one HDMI from the receiver to a monitor or something?

Bclapp · Apr 10, 2014

ArrogantSquirrelz :

ssddx :

Sorry I didn't respond to this for so long. I ordered the MartinLogan MLT-2 5.1 set for $150, fully aware of the sub possibly being bad (I can RMA it through ML no problem). For the receiver I ordered a Harman Kardon AVR 1700.

Yes it works for the two monitors as is.

I think you're misunderstanding the cabling. I now have a monitor hooked up through DVI-HDMI, the receiver hooked up via HDMI, and the second monitor DisplayPort-HDMI. 3 different cables. Now my problem (Windows 7)...

My receiver is now showing up on my PC as a display. Sound still comes through, but my 2nd monitor is now made inactive. I tried setting it so the second monitor is active and the receiver is inactive, but that also cuts the sound. My receiver won't seem to switch to audio only, and I can't seem to convince the computer that it's not a monitor... Ideas? Basically I'm stuck with a monitor and a receiver right now rather than dual monitors.

Did you ever figure out what to do? I am right where you were right now.

ArrogantSquirrelz · Apr 10, 2014

Bclapp :

Yes. It was actually me that was not understanding how to run it through the receiver. I had to run either my HDMI cable or mini-displayport to HDMI cable (doesn't matter which) to the HDMI-in port on my receiver (there was only one), then that will carry the video and sound. Then run an HDMI cable from the receiver to the monitor, and have the receiver configured to send video through that port. I didn't understand that was how it was supposed to work at first.

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