PC Graphics

[Chancedbean]

Hi,

Ive posted this question elsewhere and it was suggested I come here. If I get an answer I’ll be sure to update so I don’t waste anyone’s time

Over the last 6 months I have enjoyed the using Dolby Atmos with my PC via my RTX 2080. I recently switched over to the RX 6900 XT only to find Dolby Atmos does not work.

I have gone to sound setting via the control panel and when I select my default audio device (LG TV SCCR, AMD HIGH DEFINITION AUDIO DEVICE) and go to special sound I can see Dolby Atoms for Home Theater in the drop down box and when I select it and click apply nothing happen. If I click apply again an error pop up box appears saying “Something went wrong while trying to turn on spacial sound”. After a while a message pops up in the LG TV SSCR properties box saying “the device you are configuring has been removed”. I have to play audio again to get it back up.

I then decided to launch Shadow of the Tomb Raider and enable Dolby Atmos from there, sadly this did not work either. My audio device is the Sonos Arc and when I check the app it just says it’s outputting stereo 2.0. I‘ve set up the Sonos Arc to my LG CX 48” TV correctly as it works fine with other devices. I decided to put my Nvidia 2080 back in and Dolby Atmos worked fine, switch back to the 6900 and the problem happens again. I am using the correct HDMI 2.1 cable.

It would probably make sense that my first question is do AMD Radeon GPU’s like the 6900 xt support Dolby Atmos? If so does anyone know how to enable it?

My set up is:

Display: LG CX 48”
Speaker: Sonos Arc with Sub3
CPU: Intel 9900K
Motherboard: Z370 Gigabyte Gaming 7 OP
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance 3800Mhz
GPU: Asus RX 6900 XT
PSU: Corsair RM 1000x
Case: Phanteks P600S

Everything else works well with my new 6900 xt. Any help with this would be appreciated.

EDIT: I’m using EARC to pass through audio to my Sonos Arc soundbar, so I’m not using a DAC/ AMP. 

[Chrissi]

I have the same problem. Worked fine with a 1080ti. RX 6900 xt won't let me activate Dolby Atmos. Error message... This is definitely a problem caused by the AMD HDMI Audio Driver. The card is good, but this is really bad and needs to be fixed soon. 

[Chancedbean]

Sorry you’re having this problem too, although it has reassured me I’ve not got a faulty GPU if it’s happening for others, so thank you for that

It looks like I’ll have to put up with the very basic stereo sound until they update their audio driver. 

[Anonymous]

dolby atmos isnt a driver.. its a file format for audio.. and your PC literally copies the file to the decoder hardware.

For it to work, your soundbar needs not just HDMI input it also needs AC3 decoding hardware.. many soundbars only accept PCM but might falsely advertise 19-21 discrete speaker channels with height/ceilingspeakers from a 9.1 channel bluray disc. Yes it creates additional channels with the dolby atmos 5.1.2 or higher surround sound speaker system. So your soundbar advertising ceiling and height speakers and UP TO 19-21 speakers in different positions in your room is the most max lvl 'special tech guy' thing i've seen in minutes.  many Tv's like samsung you put the receiver or soundbars ARC channel port a specific one in the back and connect that one cable to the TV.. the TV has to go in the ARC port too, and be configured in the TV sound menu to output via ARC or enable it. its maybe not in the sound menu but possibly needs HDMI CEC and other things or under external devices? but then the TV needs a cable to the PC or media player bluray player or whatever but your TV maybe works as a hub so you can input several HDMI to the TV and they can all sort of come out the ARC maybe.. ARC maybe isnt as great for playing back broadcast TV content or maybe the netflix app in your TV as depending on the TV it maybe sounds better when outputting to the receiver or soundbar via optical spdif toslink. remember the AC3 format same one as the 90s dolby ac3.. is just increased bitrate and channel count for 7.1 netflix DDplus and increased to lossless for DD master! its an AC3 file u must specify the SPDIF output on your PC and mediaplayer software and consider the output khz some can only do 48khz not 96. optical or some HDMI content in PCM might only do stereo for reasons bandwidth or 'unknown' causes.. i have no clue.

[Chancedbean]

I have reported this problem to AMD technical support and requested they consider this in a driver update. If they come back with anything else or I somehow stumble across a solution I will update here so I will keep this open until they get back to me. 

If there is anyone here from technical support or someone who can escalate to them I (and other users) would appreciate any input. 

Thank you. 

[Chrissi]

I don't know why, but my LG TV earc option was turned off. That was my problem. No more Errors, seems to work now. 

[Chancedbean]

My EARC is on my LG CX TV and the Sonos Arc App shows there is only a stereo signal coming from the AMD graphics card. 

AMD support got back to me today. Their suggestion unfortunately did not work. This involved using show or hide to stop windows 10 auto updates, uninstalling AMD drivers in safe mode using the DDU tool, then installing the latest driver back in normal mode. 

The problem remains as it was in my original post.

[Chancedbean · Accepted solution]

I ended up solving the issue.

I tried the steps as advised by AMD. That didn’t seem to resolve the issue. I then repeated their recommended steps but this time before installing the AMD drivers I factory reset the settings on my LG CX television then installed the AMD drivers. This meant they were installed without EARC already being enabled on the TV. I then set the TV to pass through and enabled EARC and made sure HDMI was the audio output. And that was it. 

In hindsight I might have been able to resolve this problem just by resetting the TV but I don’t know how to recreate the issue to test out this theory. Hopefully this helps someone. If I’ve said something unclear please let me know and I’ll try to explain it better.

[leonsius]

Hi
I have tow questions
1) HTMI cable comes from GPU and connect to sound bar HTMI_in port. so why we need TV? and what I did wrong? did I use HTMI_out port?
2) my big issue is that GPU recognizes Soundbar as a monitor and then happens many weird things. how can I fix it?

[Torgo434]

Following just the process on the CX side, I was able to get Atmos to work. As in, I didn't have to reinstall drivers. Thanks for this!

[Fman4]

I have a Sapphire 6900XT in AMD FE style and curious about whether the issue will happen on my GPU or not.

2 question I want to ask:

1) What model is your 6900XT? FE style, TUF or STRIX?

2) After you succeeded making your 6900XT work, does your NVIDIA GPU have the eARC error?

[Chancedbean]

Hi,

I have the Power Color Red Devil and a Asus reference 6900xt. They both had the same issue. The nvidia GPU always seemed to allow Dolby Atmos to be enabled without any issue before and after I solved this. 

[BlkDragon999]

Hi there,

I've been looking for a solution to a similar issue with my GPU, since it obstinately refused to enable Dolby Atmos for Theater once connected to the TV via HDMI.

The idea, like yours, was to route the multi-channel sound from the HDMI port of the GPU to the AV receiver through the eARC enabled HDMI port of the TV set.

I finally found a workaround to definitively enable the feature, much easier to execute than the solution shared by Chancedbean (great thanks to him nevertheless).

Spoiler

Not sure if this solution will work with every setup though, but you'll lose nothing by trying!

1. set video output to your TV set
2. set your Windows default sound device to whatever is called your TV sound output
3. enable Dolby Atmos for Theater (if it works, you're done, if not go step 4)
4. restart your computer, making sure the display is set to the TV set, and the sound still comes from the TV (you must boot with sound originating from TV)
5. once the computer is restarted, the Dolby Atmos feature should be selectable with no error

That worked for me, now i'm enjoying multi-channel sound from my AV receiver via eARC.

For information, my GPU is a PowerColor RX6800XT  Red Devil

[Anonymous]

Many people dont know to upgrade their HDMI cables to ones that say 8K stamped and carved into the top for EARC or regular ARC.

also the TV might be set to PCM or using optical.. optical cables are STEREO cables.. the dolby 5.1 compresses to use 5.1 over STEREO optical which is low bitrate 640kbit/s. via recent HDMI cables you can use dolby digital plus (7.1 with higher compression for web streaming like netflix) ATMOS is for 9 to 13 channel audio like bluray discs or 4k ones to be played back on your ATMOS receiver in 19 to 21 channels with ALL the height speaker channels working due to hardware atmos chip for more surrent atmospheric audio. 

but the problem is DOLBY ATMOS is games is largely completely faked and what they mean is they AC3 encode their stereo audio output so if you've purchased the windows 10 appstore dolby atmos for headphones it might sound good? Or it just outputs in 7.1 or something lame with the PASSTHROUGH method or maybe even a re-encoding to AC3 as its output but its not a AC3 source file with lossless or master quality in 9-13 channels for "TRUE HOME THEATER" as in same number of speakers as the cinema theater. so seeing stupid **bleep** like dolbyvision on your cheap OLED mobilephone that has maybe 700nits HDR is probably bull**bleep** as dolbyvision is 10,000NITS HDR DAYLIGHT specced so why the worst spec and lowest quality cheapest displays on market put fake dolbyvision badge pretend to be 12bit display panels (your eyes only ever see in 300million colours and 10bit panels are 1.2billion) but colourspace RGB44412BIT (64bitRGB or 128bit) is separate to the pixels on your TVs physical panel which is ONLY EVER 10bit max as its overkill but oled is like mixing paints so they pretend its all the colours of the universe and pretend its 12bit.. sorta a marketing gimmick. Well anyways point is lots of stereo soundbars claim to have 21 speaker channel and height channel surround sound bounce off the ceiling audio called DOLBYATMOS.. but they're stereo for crying out loud.. what they mean is they accept HDMI and maybe support AC3 decoding in the amplification unit of the device.. its a crime for them to fake label things with dolby ATMOS and put dolby ATMOS logos on all the games ever when its super duper NOT dolby atmos..  i can tell by the terrible audio quality often.

but yeah ARC is done by TV's and receivers.. you dont use your TV and tune in to broadcast television channel on your TV and play the audio from the TV output via HDMI into your graphics card to capture it.. its meant for the TV to output to a receiver and have the one cable go to the receiver for your PC in the receiver to play to the TV via the AV receiver HDMI input but the TV or bluray player connected to the TV can play back to the receiver via the one HDMI cables into the receivers OUTPUT. but ARC is 5.1 is HDMI 2.0B but EARC is 7.1 support and works with HDMI 2.1 but both the cables and the TV and the receiver MUST be HDMI 2.1 in this way several devices go to the receiver to play audio via speakers with much less HDMI cables needing to be purchased and easily play audio from the TV without needing to switch input sources and so on.

[leonsius]

ok,
1) I am using sound bar for the PC, not for TV. how can I connect it to GPU with HDMI port? is it possible to tell the GPU this device is audio and not recognize it as a display
2) my motherboard (msi x570 carbon wifi) has optical port (SPDIF) ofc soundbar also has TV optical port, but I cant connect it with optical port. Device manager cannt recoginze soundbar with optical port. does SPDIF optical port compatiable with TV optical?

can you help me?