Audio issues with S/PDIF passthrough on NVIDIA GTX 260 / 280

[Greg King]

Hey guys, I have had a GTX 260 for a while now and finally got up the motivation to install it in my machine. The issue I am having now is that I no longer have audio running to my speakers. This issue being, I am running my main PC on my HDTV via an DVI - HDMI cable and the card is trying to pass audio along to television via the cable.

Now, this seems like a straight forward procedure but I cannot get this to work for the life of me. I have the cable included in the video card bundle connected to the daughter audio card that came with my DFI motherboard. Black to the ground and white the the audio out pin on the S/PDIF headers. I got nothing. This is a driver issue because when I uninstall the NVIDIA drivers, I magically have sound.

I am going to keep an up to date account of my experiences in getting this to work because so far, I haven't found shit in other forums for help so when I get this problem licked, this thread will, in theory, help others with this silly problem. So far, XFX has been more than helpful in the matter but I havent really done much with them.

If I am just plain stupid, please tell me folks. At least there will be an answer in here to help others... AND I'll have audio again! I don't want to have to go back to my 8800 GT until I get this figured out.

 

[Merlin]

Codecs?...Drivers?

What about the codecs, this may not have anything to do with it but, try installing codecs to clear up the issue
I have the GTX280 and have not seen any issues, but then I havent used the S/PDIF, but rather the OPTICAL out, going to the surround system.

Also, what about the drivers that came with the mobo, could you have skipped that install thinking you would not need it?

just some thoughts

 

[Kougar]

To be honest, it's all just silly. It never had to be an issue except they wanted to ensure DRM caused problems for legit users.

It sounds like some part of the "secure path" built by the DRM is broken or not coming together correctly. Unfortunately I think XFX's tech support would be the quickest avenue to get to the root of the issue.

 

[Greg King]

Keep in mind guys that I am running this to a television, not a monitor. I have zero sound anywhere. Not with DRM music, not with unprotected music.... not even windows sounds. Nothing,

Meh, I have all weekend.

 

[Merlin]

Keep in mind guys that I am running this to a television, not a monitor. I have zero sound anywhere. Not with DRM music, not with unprotected music.... not even windows sounds. Nothing,

Meh, I have all weekend.

I have mine setup to the 40" plasma in living room, but my sound is going to surround system ( AMP ). As you do, I use the HDMI but for video only. I also use an adapter , DVI I to HDMI, I've never got sound to come out of it, so I went to the AMP

 

[Kougar]

Keep in mind guys that I am running this to a television, not a monitor. I have zero sound anywhere. Not with DRM music, not with unprotected music.... not even windows sounds. Nothing,

Meh, I have all weekend.

Yes, but you said this:

This is a driver issue because when I uninstall the NVIDIA drivers, I magically have sound.

So it sounds like a software issue, perhaps DRM. It doesn't matter if you use a TV or a monitor, DRM requires a protected path for movie playback. That is why the GPU has the SPDIF port to begin with, to maintain a protected path.

Now if you have no sound whatsoever then that's slightly different. I'd make sure Windows was set to using the correct SPDIF port, nothing onboard (with onboard disabled in the BIOS for good measure) as I assume you are using an ASUS Xonar's SPDIF ports...

 

[Greg King]

FIXED!

Alright, this was a strange one. I uninstalled the Realtek audio drivers, restarted and let Windows install it's default sound drivers and all is right in the universe. I have no idea why installing the NVIDIA drivers fubar'd my sound but it did and at the end of the day, NVIDIA won. I hope this helps anyone who is having this issue... it was a stumble upon fix.