Receivers, PCs, and sticks. Oh my.

[ArmyOfQuad]

I have a lot of experience with modern digital technology and multichannel - but find myself going down a path of dead ends it seems lately.

My main listening room has a Denon receiver with Oppo player (one that reads iso images), and my main PC tower has a video card with HDMI out that is also connected to the receiver, so that covers just about anything I need to do.

But I'm always looking for ways to make this technology make things easier for me throughout the house. I have everything archived to a media server, and accessible around the house with devices. I had bought a lot of roku sticks a few years back, and was playing around with those. Mostly for watching youtube and twitch stuff, or watching TV/movie stuff that is archived using plex. But then something happened that resulted in the twitch apps on roku being pulled. For a while the app was working, but no longer supported, and there was a 3rd party app that was working....but that guy seems to have been sued or sent a cease and desist, because that app disappeared without warning, and the guy completely disappeared from online.

This seems to be related to twitch being owned by amazon - which has their firesticks. A heavy handed move to shut out competition.

Anyways, firesticks went on sale, and I bought a bunch of those, and have those throughout the house. I've played around with plex and kodi on them. Kodi is unstable and seems to crash easily. I had it working with 5.1 at some point, but then a firestick update changed the way it handles sound and started overriding everything. Basically, every time I decide, ok, this weekend I'll try to listen to some 5.1 on the firestick, it turns into hours of going down rabbit holes, and never getting it to work right, because once I fix one problem, I find another.

Stupid technology.

I found myself saying to myself more and more - if this thing would just work more like a computer, I could work with this.

So - I grabbed a spare HP 800 g2 mini desktop that was kicking around, and decided that would make a nice addition to the downstairs home theater system. PC with HDMI - I should be able to play anything I throw at it, have any streaming at my fingertips, and not have to deal with the firestick bullshit anymore.

Except - apparently Denon receivers don't play nice with PCs.

Which is news to me, since my upstairs Denon receiver has been working nicely with my tower for years. Although that tower, and the video card, are getting to be a bit old at this point I suppose, while the HP mini desktop is a bit newer.

But, both receivers won't work with the HP desktop. The downstairs receiver is a AVR-4308-CI. The desktop works fine directly connected to the TV....but to get all my surround formats working I need it connected to the receiver, and I can't get it to the receiver through the TV. When connected to the receiver, it gives no indication it can see a signal on the HDMI. Yet, when I teamviewer into the computer, I can see that it is sending audio and video out the HDMI, and the sound device shows up as a Denon receiver. So, the computer clearly sees it's connected to the Denon receiver, and is sending signal to it....but the receiver isn't seeing it.

So I reached out to Denon support. Had a phone call with a very nice guy. He immediately informed me that all of their receivers, new and old, generally don't play nice with PCs, they don't really support that, and they recommend going directly to the TV, and then going from TV to the receiver. I suppose that answer works for most of their customers. He also started going into how maybe I could eventually get it to work one day, but then the next day it'll probably stop working again for no reason....basically it's a problematic thing, getting PCs to work with their receivers. I couldn't get much as far as details as to why this is problematic, what it expects/needs to see......the details. They don't have access to those level of details. But, he recommended trying it in pure direct mode, or something like that. Which still didn't work. But over the course of the call, the TV turned itself off since it wasn't getting any signal to save power, and then all of a sudden I started getting sound out of the receiver.

I found the pure direct mode didn't play a role in this. I can consistently get sound out of the receiver from the PC, as long as the TV is off. I turn on the TV....and it breaks.

I can't stop sending video signal out the HDMI - the HDMI out is only available for audio if it is enabled in the display output, so disabling video out isn't an option. Because....one thing that came to my attention is that my TV and the PC support wireless video. So, what I found technically works, is disconnecting the HDMI cable between the receiver and the TV, and then sending the video to the TV with the wireless option, and set the displays out the hdmi and to the wireless TV to duplicate. Then I get sound going to the receiver over the hdmi without the TV interfering, and video to the TV wireless. This is inconvenient for 2 reasons, the wireless display setting doesn't automatically establish itself when booting up, so every time I turn on the computer I'd need to teamviewer in to turn on the display, and the biggest reason - I have other video devices on the receiver, so I'd have to disconnect and reconnect the HDMI cable between the TV and the receiver when going back and forth between using the PC and other things.


Anyways.....that's my experience and what I've learned so far. I wanted to document this all here, and see if anyone else out there is tinkering with these things and found similar things, and perhaps found ways to get receivers to play nicely with computers. Also - recommendations for other receiver brands that aren't problematic with PCs would be useful information here as well, as I can tell you right now, as someone that has purchased multiple Denon receivers at this point, I will not be buying another Denon receiver after this. As someone that is always playing around with computers and technology, I have no room in my house for modern AV equipment that doesn't play nicely with computers.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Perhaps its an issue with the version of HDMI. I haven't run into it yet but the newer HDMI versions have more restrictive DRM routines, and I'm not convinced its all backward compatible. Im hoping someone with more knowledge can shed some light.

 

[DuncanS]

Perhaps its an issue with the version of HDMI. I haven't run into it yet but the newer HDMI versions have more restrictive DRM routines, and I'm not convinced its all backward compatible. Im hoping someone with more knowledge can shed some light.

The HDCP 2.2 over new systems HDMI won't play with old ones. My i7 NUC has HDMI with HDCP 2.2 and blanks its output if connected to my 2013 Pioneer Amp, yet if I connect it to my Oppo 203 I can stream 5.1 or 7.1 to the Amp. To get it to work I have an HDMI splitter on the NUC HDMI, one output to the 2018 Sony TV so I can get picture (& sound) the other goes through an HDCP convertor so changes HDCP 2.2 to HDCP 1.3 so the amp will pick up the audio and the NUC sees a valid HDCP 2.2 termination. To top it off as only the TV is a valid HDCP 2.2 sink the NUC will only allow 5.1 nothing higher. HDCP 2.2 will blank outputs if anything in the system doesn't respond as HDCP 2.2 F***ing ridiculous, zero backwards compatibility.

However, I got fed up with this so I got an Odroid N2 board running CoreElec & Kodi and it plays 5.1 or 7.1 happily through HDMI with my Amp.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

Yeah, I was considering that HDCP may be a factor. But what's weird is that the receiver takes the signal from the PC when it doesn't have to pass it through to the TV, and the TV takes the signal by itself, so each device seems to pair fine with one another, but when the receiver has to take the signal from the PC, and pass it to the TV, that's where it gets funky.

I do have an HDMI splitter that allows me to use my roku and fire sticks with a capture device to defeat the bullshit copy protection - but that didn't help me in this case.

 

[humprof]

I have a lot of experience with modern digital technology and multichannel - but find myself going down a path of dead ends it seems lately.

My main listening room has a Denon receiver with Oppo player (one that reads iso images), and my main PC tower has a video card with HDMI out that is also connected to the receiver, so that covers just about anything I need to do.

But I'm always looking for ways to make this technology make things easier for me throughout the house. I have everything archived to a media server, and accessible around the house with devices. I had bought a lot of roku sticks a few years back, and was playing around with those. Mostly for watching youtube and twitch stuff, or watching TV/movie stuff that is archived using plex. But then something happened that resulted in the twitch apps on roku being pulled. For a while the app was working, but no longer supported, and there was a 3rd party app that was working....but that guy seems to have been sued or sent a cease and desist, because that app disappeared without warning, and the guy completely disappeared from online.

This seems to be related to twitch being owned by amazon - which has their firesticks. A heavy handed move to shut out competition.

Anyways, firesticks went on sale, and I bought a bunch of those, and have those throughout the house. I've played around with plex and kodi on them. Kodi is unstable and seems to crash easily. I had it working with 5.1 at some point, but then a firestick update changed the way it handles sound and started overriding everything. Basically, every time I decide, ok, this weekend I'll try to listen to some 5.1 on the firestick, it turns into hours of going down rabbit holes, and never getting it to work right, because once I fix one problem, I find another.

Stupid technology.

I found myself saying to myself more and more - if this thing would just work more like a computer, I could work with this.

So - I grabbed a spare HP 800 g2 mini desktop that was kicking around, and decided that would make a nice addition to the downstairs home theater system. PC with HDMI - I should be able to play anything I throw at it, have any streaming at my fingertips, and not have to deal with the firestick bullshit anymore.

Except - apparently Denon receivers don't play nice with PCs.

Which is news to me, since my upstairs Denon receiver has been working nicely with my tower for years. Although that tower, and the video card, are getting to be a bit old at this point I suppose, while the HP mini desktop is a bit newer.

But, both receivers won't work with the HP desktop. The downstairs receiver is a AVR-4308-CI. The desktop works fine directly connected to the TV....but to get all my surround formats working I need it connected to the receiver, and I can't get it to the receiver through the TV. When connected to the receiver, it gives no indication it can see a signal on the HDMI. Yet, when I teamviewer into the computer, I can see that it is sending audio and video out the HDMI, and the sound device shows up as a Denon receiver. So, the computer clearly sees it's connected to the Denon receiver, and is sending signal to it....but the receiver isn't seeing it.

So I reached out to Denon support. Had a phone call with a very nice guy. He immediately informed me that all of their receivers, new and old, generally don't play nice with PCs, they don't really support that, and they recommend going directly to the TV, and then going from TV to the receiver. I suppose that answer works for most of their customers. He also started going into how maybe I could eventually get it to work one day, but then the next day it'll probably stop working again for no reason....basically it's a problematic thing, getting PCs to work with their receivers. I couldn't get much as far as details as to why this is problematic, what it expects/needs to see......the details. They don't have access to those level of details. But, he recommended trying it in pure direct mode, or something like that. Which still didn't work. But over the course of the call, the TV turned itself off since it wasn't getting any signal to save power, and then all of a sudden I started getting sound out of the receiver.

I found the pure direct mode didn't play a role in this. I can consistently get sound out of the receiver from the PC, as long as the TV is off. I turn on the TV....and it breaks.

I can't stop sending video signal out the HDMI - the HDMI out is only available for audio if it is enabled in the display output, so disabling video out isn't an option. Because....one thing that came to my attention is that my TV and the PC support wireless video. So, what I found technically works, is disconnecting the HDMI cable between the receiver and the TV, and then sending the video to the TV with the wireless option, and set the displays out the hdmi and to the wireless TV to duplicate. Then I get sound going to the receiver over the hdmi without the TV interfering, and video to the TV wireless. This is inconvenient for 2 reasons, the wireless display setting doesn't automatically establish itself when booting up, so every time I turn on the computer I'd need to teamviewer in to turn on the display, and the biggest reason - I have other video devices on the receiver, so I'd have to disconnect and reconnect the HDMI cable between the TV and the receiver when going back and forth between using the PC and other things.


Anyways.....that's my experience and what I've learned so far. I wanted to document this all here, and see if anyone else out there is tinkering with these things and found similar things, and perhaps found ways to get receivers to play nicely with computers. Also - recommendations for other receiver brands that aren't problematic with PCs would be useful information here as well, as I can tell you right now, as someone that has purchased multiple Denon receivers at this point, I will not be buying another Denon receiver after this. As someone that is always playing around with computers and technology, I have no room in my house for modern AV equipment that doesn't play nicely with computers.

Oof. Probably not helpful, but I have a Marantz NR1607 that has played quite nicely, via HDMI, with a 4-year-old (5?) cheapo Toshiba laptop from Best Buy for some time now. Between foobar, MediaMonkey, VLC, DVDFab, and Windows Media Center, it handles everything from mp3 to Atmos.

I know the innards of Denons and Marantzes aren't identical, but I was under the impression that they shared a lot of the same engineering, so it seems odd that Denons would be problematic and Marantzes, not.

 

[atrocity]

I can consistently get sound out of the receiver from the PC, as long as the TV is off. I turn on the TV....and it breaks.

I'd have killed to have that problem a few years ago. I was in exactly the opposite situation: I wanted to be able to play multichannel music from a W*nd*ws computer without having the TV on. But whenever I would turn off the TV, the audio output from the computer would die and I could never get it back without rebooting.

DuncanS mentioned an Odroid N2 working for him and that's been my experience as well. OK, technically a C2 in my case. I've also found the most recent Raspberry Pi (the 4) to work just fine as well. Were I starting down this path for the first time I'd stick with the Raspberry Pi line, not because they're superior computers (at least, not as far as I know) but because they're ubiquitous and seem to have the best (and longest-lived!) support of all the little boxes.

At the moment you can install the latest Ubuntu LTS (20.04.1) on a Raspberry Pi, but the Odroid C2 I'm using as a file server is stuck on 16.something until the end of time.

 

[ubertrout]

I've found that for multichannel audio from a PC I've had best results using foobar2000 and the WASAPI output plugin, bypassing the windows sound mixer and sending the signal out as the raw audio bits. YMMV of course. I've mostly switched to using Sony disc spinners for playing media - something like the BDP-S3700 will play everything you throw at it (except ISO) with less hassle than any PC.

 

[jimfisheye]

I got led down a slightly different path with equipment aimed at the home recording musician. I had separate hi-fi components early on and got clued in that that was more bang for the buck than the all in one box thingies. That led to always having separate inputs devices + preamp device + amps and speakers. The AV receivers came across as either cheapness or the high end ones were simply poor value vs separate components.

Then the fake surround stuff hit in the 1990s. Remember those? AV receivers with amps built in for the additional speakers and everything. And... literally no way to input a surround source! Those damn things were sold for adding awkward reverb to stereo program. All the expense...

So initially surround was DIY. Rip a disc to wav file and play it in Protools HD. Or get a shared copy from a Q4 or Q8 someone digitized. Not the most convenient media player but less work than listening to vinyl on the other hand.

That evolved into modern media player apps and the FLAC format pretty quickly and I never looked back. I see all these modern AV receivers with format restrictions and difficult digital connections to manage. You can walk out of a Worst Purchase with $1000's of garbage and not be able to listen to the lossless surround program! Then there's the absolute insanity of purchasing multiple sets of DA converters (one of if not the most expensive component in a system) because you're duplicating components across multiple devices. (eg both your bluray player and your AVR have expensive DA converters. Pick the best set to listen to. Sucks to see the other set just sitting there unused with what you paid for them!)
Or something breaks and you have to throw everything out and start over?!

And then we get into the copy protection gone wild crap!
Reducing the sample rate on digital outputs.
Reducing fidelity in other ways.
Or straight up restricting some formats for competition. (Remember those Sony DVD players that disabled DVDA playback?)
"If they can't even play it, then they can't copy it!" style of copy protection.
HDMI outputs restricted to video only (audio disabled).
HDMI inputs restricted to video only (audio disabled).
You REALLY have to read between the lines and watch out for this stuff!

It's all been happiness and light with any basic computer and standard audio interface with the outputs you need this whole time though. Obviously I also do recording and production and have a couple things above the 'basic' level. But any basic computer and USB interface with enough outputs for your surround channels is the way to go. Purchase your DA converters (via the audio interface) with intention and only buy what you need. Always have the fullest quality playback from your sources. New formats are usually just a codec or media player software upgrade.

I think some of these Amazon services and modern AVR products are more about restricting playback. I'd never consider or recommend an AVR product. Avoid HDMI if you value your sanity.

 

[Scott65]

HDMI outputs restricted to video only (audio disabled).

I bought a laptop 9 years ago and it took me ages to realise I was never going to get audio out on the HDMI port because audio had been disabled.

 

[svengaleekie]

I just wanted to say that I have a Denon AVR-X4400H connected by HDMI to a home built PC running Windows 10, I can play surround files using Foobar2000 or Media Player Classic in Quad 5.1 or 7.1, there is an Atmos option too though I don't think I have any Atmos files. Video and sound are from the motherboard (AMD) with AMD Radeon software, if it matters ( seems it does in your case) the TV is a Panasonic. Basically I'm saying that my Denon seems to be playing well enough with the computer.
The TV is just a monitor at this point and is setup as Multiple Displays, screen 2.

 

[svengaleekie]

Screenshots of the options I have set.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I just wanted to say that I have a Denon AVR-X4400H connected by HDMI to a home built PC running Windows 10, I can play surround files using Foobar2000 or Media Player Classic in Quad 5.1 or 7.1, there is an Atmos option too though I don't think I have any Atmos files. Video and sound are from the motherboard (AMD) with AMD Radeon software, if it matters ( seems it does in your case) the TV is a Panasonic. Basically I'm saying that my Denon seems to be playing well enough with the computer.
The TV is just a monitor at this point and is setup as Multiple Displays, screen 2.

I can see your AVR is HDCP 2.2 compliant. If the AVR and the PC both support HDCP 2.2 there should be no issues. The problem is getting an older scheme to work with a newer one, like HDCP 2.2 and HDCP 1.4 for example. I suspect that's the problem the OP has. I use an older Emotiva Pre/pro using HDCP 1.4. I believe my Oppo 83SE is also HDCP 1.4. I know that when I go to upgrade the Pre/pro with something more advanced to expect problems with the HDMI connections to both. Since I dont play disks anymore, I believe my way around all this is to get away from HDMI for audio and go with a USB connection.

 

[DuncanS]

I can see your AVR is HDCP 2.2 compliant. If the AVR and the PC both support HDCP 2.2 there should be no issues. The problem is getting an older scheme to work with a newer one, like HDCP 2.2 and HDCP 1.4 for example. I suspect that's the problem the OP has. I use an older Emotiva Pre/pro using HDCP 1.4. I believe my Oppo 83SE is also HDCP 1.4. I know that when I go to upgrade the Pre/pro with something more advanced to expect problems with the HDMI connections to both. Since I dont play disks anymore, I believe my way around all this is to get away from HDMI for audio and go with a USB connection.

What should happen with HDMI and HDCP is that a 1.x source will play with a 2.2 compliant sink. i.e. amp, TV etc., assuming they have implemented the protocol correctly! So when you upgrade you should be OK (allegedly!). The issue is some new 2.2 sources (like my NUC) can't/won't downgrade to 1.x if they get that response from old amps/TVs etc. Its stupid .............and infuriating

 

[Dwgwnr1969]

I got led down a slightly different path with equipment aimed at the home recording musician. I had separate hi-fi components early on and got clued in that that was more bang for the buck than the all in one box thingies. That led to always having separate inputs devices + preamp device + amps and speakers. The AV receivers came across as either cheapness or the high end ones were simply poor value vs separate components.

Then the fake surround stuff hit in the 1990s. Remember those? AV receivers with amps built in for the additional speakers and everything. And... literally no way to input a surround source! Those damn things were sold for adding awkward reverb to stereo program. All the expense...

So initially surround was DIY. Rip a disc to wav file and play it in Protools HD. Or get a shared copy from a Q4 or Q8 someone digitized. Not the most convenient media player but less work than listening to vinyl on the other hand.

That evolved into modern media player apps and the FLAC format pretty quickly and I never looked back. I see all these modern AV receivers with format restrictions and difficult digital connections to manage. You can walk out of a Worst Purchase with $1000's of garbage and not be able to listen to the lossless surround program! Then there's the absolute insanity of purchasing multiple sets of DA converters (one of if not the most expensive component in a system) because you're duplicating components across multiple devices. (eg both your bluray player and your AVR have expensive DA converters. Pick the best set to listen to. Sucks to see the other set just sitting there unused with what you paid for them!)
Or something breaks and you have to throw everything out and start over?!

And then we get into the copy protection gone wild crap!
Reducing the sample rate on digital outputs.
Reducing fidelity in other ways.
Or straight up restricting some formats for competition. (Remember those Sony DVD players that disabled DVDA playback?)
"If they can't even play it, then they can't copy it!" style of copy protection.
HDMI outputs restricted to video only (audio disabled).
HDMI inputs restricted to video only (audio disabled).
You REALLY have to read between the lines and watch out for this stuff!

It's all been happiness and light with any basic computer and standard audio interface with the outputs you need this whole time though. Obviously I also do recording and production and have a couple things above the 'basic' level. But any basic computer and USB interface with enough outputs for your surround channels is the way to go. Purchase your DA converters (via the audio interface) with intention and only buy what you need. Always have the fullest quality playback from your sources. New formats are usually just a codec or media player software upgrade.

I think some of these Amazon services and modern AVR products are more about restricting playback. I'd never consider or recommend an AVR product. Avoid HDMI if you value your sanity.

That's hilarious, worst purchase, I just got that! A flip on best buy...lolololol