U2414H, unsupported audio format, set to PCM

Question

For the past few months I kept investigating (off and on) why the following error message would sometimes appear on my Dell U2414H monitor screen when booting up or waking the PC from hibernation.  Mind you it did not cause a problem or at least it was not a problem other than the 10 seconds it was on screen so I generally let it slide. 'Unsupported audio format set the audio output to PCM (pulse code modulation).' Anyway, after a few tries looking in the wrong places for a PC setting to adjust I found this forum through a google search.  I don't know why I didn't look here in the first place.  So here I am reading a few replies to the problem when I get a good feeling I 'm getting close.  I was starting to feel for Apple owners with their Display Port/HDMI problems because they seem to get the same error message but for a different reason than me on my HP PC.  I should note that I am using the monitors' HDMI input. This forum had plenty of material to work through but eventually I read a somewhat related post that instructed the problem solver to open up the NVIDIA Control Panel to solve a color problem.  Something clicked because I already knew my PC had the NVIDIA GEForce GT 230 video card so I opened up the Control Panel and began poking around.  It was at this point I took another look at the Dell U2414H input/output panel and realized the monitor had no audio capability. A light bulb finally went off when I saw the NVIDIA menu contained a 'Display' section with a sub-section called 'Set up digital audio.'. There were two entries, one for DVI and another for HDMI. The HDMI combo box identified the Dell U2414H so I changed it to 'Turn off audio' and have not had this error message problem since. I know this post was not a question and it was a little long winded but what I thought there must be a lot of people with various NVIDIA graphics cards and an audio incapable Dell monitor although this solution might very well apply to other monitor brands that would benefit from my solution.

DELL-Chris M · Answer

Awesome! Thanks for posting this. I will add it to my U2414H notes.

Monitors

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