Studio Hybrid 7.1 Audio?

I can't find anything in the Dell manuals about this.  Is it supposed to have 7.1 capability or do you just "think" it has 7.1 capability?  In most regular desktops they only have the capability of what speaker modes are available in the speaker type setup.

Have you contacted Dell support?

No, I haven't contacted support yet.

Its deffo 7.1 capable, it has the Realtek ALC888S Audio Codec - and clearly states it on the Dell Website as 7.1 audio capable.

I will contact support and see what they say.

Thanks.

@Diddn,

Have you managed to get this resolved?

I can't even get my Hybrid to play BD movies! I to connect it to my ONkyo 606 via HDMI and then use a Panasonic Plasma TV as output.

I always get a strange error message in MediaDirect regarding graphics drivers or dual monitor output. Do you use MediaDirect or have you already switched to something else like PowerDVD?

Any feedback and comments appreciated as I'm really stuck on this and the Dell Support guys haven't been helpful at all - even trying to claim they don't recognise using a\v receivers! Why else sell BD drives if not to connect up to at least 5.1 speaker systems and HD capable monitors\tv's?

Cheers,

Andy.

Hi Andy,

No, I didn't get a chance to investigate it any further. But to answer your question - I've tried various players inc PowerDVD and nothing worked. I can only get stereo on the configuration software.

About the message you receive in Media direct ..... is your TV HDCP compliant? Could it be complaining about that? I get that drivers message when I try to play a BD movie thru my non HDCP compliant Dell monitor.

I will try again soon and report my findings here.

Cheers

Diddn

I'm pretty certain that you can ONLY transmit stereo over the supplied HDMI cable. It doesn't have the hardware to send 7.1. If you want 7.1 you need to use the HDMI to transmit the VIDEO signal only, and then use the onboard soundcard to transmit the audio seperately. Just plug your Optical/Coax/Whatever output to your amp.

The 7.1 capability is on the Realtek sound card built into the computer. The HDMI port on the comptuer is from the video card, which is totally independent from the sound card. If you want to use 7.1 audio, the best way is to configure your tv to receive video via HDMI and use the audio through the sound card output

Will the coax/spdif out transmit 7.1 audio? I thought it was limited to 5.1 only?

The specification of coax and spdif vary widely. They are dependent on the soundcard on the computer as well as the speakers you are using. As far as I know, I have only come across 5.1 on coax and spdif connections.

I am at my wit's end. I have tried using straight hdmi and using the optical out. With hdmi i can only see stereo option when i click configure. With opt out, the configure button is grayed out, so cannot setup 5.1. My 1525 laptop had no issues connecting through hdmi and play 5.1 audio sources.