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Wii U - Surround Sound Guide and FAQ
- Thread starter CLEEK
- Start date
HDMI cables work in such a way that they either work as intended, or not at all, iirc.
Was the salesman trying to sell you a Monster cable?
For the DSP model one higher than the one used in Wii U there is a Dolby Digital realtime encoding codec available for sale. But yes, Nintendo wanted to "save" money, although actually they don't save any money, because the consumer is supposed to buy the console with his own money. And in Wii U case, some consumers care about shitting on audio support and won't buy Wii U because of that. Which means the consumer will actually save money in this case. Nintendo just loses customers. Which means not implementing really cheap things like optical out + Dolby Digital actually bites them in the ass. I love
d
HDMI cables with silver tips transmit worse bits than the ones with gold tips. Better bits are more happy and so will be the picture quality. The salesman will also be more happy. So buy gold HDMI cables only.
he lied to you, it's a digital signal - the cables either work or they don't. There is not a better digital signal.
Yes. But I bought monoprice cables instead. They have gold tips too.
lol
As the poster above said, yeah he was lying, Monster Cables are the biggest ripoff known to man, essentially.
i was in the wiiu section@bestbuy and there was this guy buying the rocketfish 8ft hdmi cable for the 360 on the recommendation of the clerk(70 dollars).
clerk went away, and i told the guy, you know, they sell the same length hdmi cable over by the tv's for about 15 dollars, it will work EXACTLY the same as that one for 1/4th the price, or you can wait a few days, goto monoprice.com and buy the same length hdmi cable for about 7 bucks mail order, the guy went, REALLY? i went yes, hdmi is a digital cable, it works, or it does not work. buy the cheapest you can find and 99% of the time it will work fine for you
clerk went away, and i told the guy, you know, they sell the same length hdmi cable over by the tv's for about 15 dollars, it will work EXACTLY the same as that one for 1/4th the price, or you can wait a few days, goto monoprice.com and buy the same length hdmi cable for about 7 bucks mail order, the guy went, REALLY? i went yes, hdmi is a digital cable, it works, or it does not work. buy the cheapest you can find and 99% of the time it will work fine for you
tehrik-e-insaaf
Member
so for some reason - when i launch wii mode - my sound stops working
i'm using a straight HDMI connector from the Wii U to the TV - Wii U works perfectly fine
any help?
EDIT: all wii u sound is gone now... wow... tried changing everything on my TV and on the wii u... nada
i'm using a straight HDMI connector from the Wii U to the TV - Wii U works perfectly fine
any help?
EDIT: all wii u sound is gone now... wow... tried changing everything on my TV and on the wii u... nada
Try a different HDMI cable first. Then I would call Nintendo. If you have Wii component cables, you could see if that fixes your problem. Not saying it would be a permanent fix.
Sorry guys to bump an old thread, but does the Pioneer VSX527 support L-PCM?
I've tried googling + digging through manuals but there's no confirmation, except some guys mentioned it earlier in this thread...
I might be able to score one for £159 on offer at the moment, but I won't bother if it's not capable of Wii U surround.
I've tried googling + digging through manuals but there's no confirmation, except some guys mentioned it earlier in this thread...
I might be able to score one for £159 on offer at the moment, but I won't bother if it's not capable of Wii U surround.
cardmeister
Neo Member
This question is for you audio experts out there who actually understand how such things work.
I have a receiver which can handle LPCM just fine, but I'm totally bummed over the "no surround for netflix and friends" thing. In my opinion, this makes the much-advertised TVii app kind of pointless since surround sound has to be sacrificed.
I understand why Netflix (and others) don't transmit uncompressed sound and I understand that Nintendo chose to omit the licenses required for DD5.1 decoding/encoding, but here's the question:
Given the hardware, is it technically feasible for the Wii U to just take a DD5.1 signal from the source (e.g. Netflix) and pass it through the HDMI?
No decompression, no decoding, just a literal pass-through allowing the receiver to handle the heavy lifting.
I have a receiver which can handle LPCM just fine, but I'm totally bummed over the "no surround for netflix and friends" thing. In my opinion, this makes the much-advertised TVii app kind of pointless since surround sound has to be sacrificed.
I understand why Netflix (and others) don't transmit uncompressed sound and I understand that Nintendo chose to omit the licenses required for DD5.1 decoding/encoding, but here's the question:
Given the hardware, is it technically feasible for the Wii U to just take a DD5.1 signal from the source (e.g. Netflix) and pass it through the HDMI?
No decompression, no decoding, just a literal pass-through allowing the receiver to handle the heavy lifting.
Palette Swap
Member
Technically, there are probably zero hurdles to doing this but legally, I'm not sure you can pass these signals through without some agreement with Dolby?
If it is technically possible developers should be able to license it on a per game basis, just like it's already done with DPL2.
cardmeister
Neo Member
That's an interesting point. Maybe somebody with some experience in that area will chime in.
I did not know that DPL2 was licensed at the game level.
I do know that Dolby offers a real-time encoder which can literally encode a stream of data into DD5.1. (Reference: Dolby Digital Live)They specifically target the gaming market with this technology due to the dynamic nature of video game audio.
I suspect this is the common way it is done on other consoles, wherein the game developer does not actually implement any given format but the console does the appropriate real-time encoding. This makes more sense than the developers providing every audio asset in various formats. They use the resource compression associated with the engine, the engine decompresses according to its design, the console encodes according to user's system-level and/or game-level settings. (All assumptions on my part given the existence of the Dolby Digital Live tech and cross-platform-ness of game development.) Can anybody else confirm or deny this assumption?
It has also been my assumption all along that this was the piece of tech that Nintendo skipped on (for cost, power-consumption, and/or whatever other reason). Consider the target market of hardware manufacturers, this is probably a non-trivial license fee.
For games, I'm not personally too concerned with the lack of DD5.1 since my receiver supports the uncompressed format; my sympathies do go out for those who do not, though. My primary concern is the streaming video services which can not support uncompressed audio for bandwidth reasons.
Can anybody speak to whether or not Ninty would need a license agreement just to push the data around? Seems silly to me since raw data is raw data, but IANAL.
As an analogy, most (if not all) TVs can pass-through a DD5.1 signal through their HDMI or optical cable... do they pay a licensing fee? Do they even advertise DD5.1 support?
There is a reason none of the GC/Wii hardware comes with the Dolby license logo, it's not licensed on the hardware level. So Nintendo saves the money for licensing something and pay for every unit of hardware produced and replaced it with the possibility of developers opting for it, them then having to pay for every produced unit of software using it (which then prominently shows the Dolby logo on the title and package). Wii U appears to be a straight continuation of that approach.
Astral/H3X
Member
If this is true, then surround sound isn't totally screwed, I guess. I don't worry about Surround Sound anyway, since I use desktop 5.1's and no console on the face of the planet wants to have any non-$400 way to use those.
cardmeister
Neo Member
Okay, that makes sense. This also implies that it would be legally feasible to pass a DD signal through without officially supporting (or paying for) it. I think a quick look at the box of a modern TV could further support that theory. (I suppose they could omit the logo even though they payed licensing, but I don't know why they would).
Assuming that's true, why would none of the streaming video services support it though?
I would guess that it is an SDK limitation. It is possible that the Wii U API does not provide a means by which to pass through raw audio data. (I am a software developer by trade, I will try to say that again in less technical terms.)
A software development kit (SDK) commonly has an "interface" (API) which is a list of commands or instructions that the developer can send to the console's operating system. They developer can do whatever they want in their game code, but when it comes to input/output, they are restricted to this API. If they API says "you can only give me channel-specific audio data", then that's all the developer can do. Here's the right-channel data, here's the left-channel data, etc. This is an over-simplification, but is sufficient for this topic.
If we can confirm the feasibility of the hardware passing through the data, then it seems (in my opinion) that an SDK restriction is a likely explanation of why Netflix (and others) don't already do this.
The good news is that software restrictions are "fixable" through updates. Unfortunately, we will probably never know for sure since anybody with access to the SDK is probably under a super-strict NDA and would not be able to confirm it.
I'd be interested in hearing all other thoughts on this!
Palette Swap
Member
I'm really not an expert on sound encoding for games but intuitively, streaming a video with an already encoded DD track from amazon would have a negligible computational footprint. OTOH, encoding in real time game audio in a DD stream would present some technical requirements I guess. Hence the difference.
apologies if this was already covered, but has anyone tried this?
I'm just looking for a cheap solution to get my Wii U to talk to my receiver. It's an onkyo that doesn't have hdmi input.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LOIKX6/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Is there a cheaper solution?
Should I just replace my receiver? lol
I'm just looking for a cheap solution to get my Wii U to talk to my receiver. It's an onkyo that doesn't have hdmi input.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LOIKX6/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Is there a cheaper solution?
Should I just replace my receiver? lol
From the looks of it, that won't work for surround, just stereo.
It just takes a stereo HDMI input and allows you to output stereo over 3.5mm headphone port.
plagiarize
Banned
just wanted to say, thank you to this thread. I got my 7.1 speakers properly installed over the weekend. thanks to the people here who provided advice and guidance leading me to the Onkyo speakers and receiver I picked up. they have made a huge difference and I have surround sound for my Wii U now
I don't believe you need a license to pass-through an encoded signal. You only need a licence if your device decodes the signal.
I remember reading this on the Raspberry Pi forums a while back.
So I decided to just update my 10 year old receiver instead of ghetto-rigging the Wii with component cables ($46! for the official ones) and doing optical from the tv to the AVR for subpar stereo.
I picked up a yamaha rx-v373 for $177 @ newegg. It has 4 HDMI in / 1 out, handles multichannel PCM and sort of future proof with 4k passthrough.
I picked up a yamaha rx-v373 for $177 @ newegg. It has 4 HDMI in / 1 out, handles multichannel PCM and sort of future proof with 4k passthrough.
Nostremitus
Member
Quick question, I was looking at the Onkyo TX-SR313. Its User manual states "multichannel PCM"
That could mean 2.1 or 5.1... Does anyone on here know which it is?
That could mean 2.1 or 5.1... Does anyone on here know which it is?
I don't see why it would mean 2.1. Do you own that model?
Nostremitus
Member
No, I'm looking to replace my 10yr old Sony dinosaur. I might as well get something I know will work with the Wii U.
All the retail sites that I saw said that specific receiver was 5.1. The Onkyo site said it was 5.1. I can't think of any reason the words "multichannel PCM" would refer to 2.1.
Nostremitus
Member
I had never considered the possibility of it not being 5.1 PCM until I was looking at a different receiver (may have been Yamaha) that was 5.1 with DD and DTS but it only received 2.1 uncompressed. So I started looking at the fine print a little closer on others. Unfortunately, it's not something that's mentioned often or detailed.
Gotcha. Good luck, I don't want to get you into a situation where you make a mistake. Can't really help beyond that. Have you considered other brands? I have a Denon 791 and it's been pretty straightforward.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Technically we do not have digital signals, well perfect square waves, instantaneous transitions from one state to the next like the one we think of when we thing of digital signals, do not really exist in practice. When we encode information and send it across a wire we are more fault tolerant because we have a certain amount of error correction we can perform when we retrieve the data, which bandwidth permitting might be sent with a certain degree of redundancy, but if the quality of the signal is low enough then it might be beyond the level of error correction we can perform.
Basically, while HDMI is probably much more error tolerant than component/composite, it does not mean that any kind of shitty, battered, and partially cut cable will do
.Nostremitus
Member
Lol, thanks. I'll look into the Denon.
Like the hat?
Banned
So if I was looking for something in the sub $200 department that would offer wii u surround, what should I look for? I assume anything under $200 wouldn't include any speakers, would it
When I bought a hdtv for my ps3, a hdmi cable gave me a signal that went to a black screen once a frame every few seconds. Switching the cable fixed it.
Dunno what the fuck.
Okay, question time for you experts...
I recently got my hands on a surplus monitor with DVI-D input and I plan to use it as a backup Wii U device, among other things.
I managed to finally track down an HDMI to DVI adaptor (harder than it sounds) at the local Frys, and the Wii U is spitting out a nice image to the monitor. 720p, but it's decent enough for the moment...
Is there a non-stupidly-expensive way to "extract"/split the audio from the HDMI cable into something more analog friendly? DVI doesn't do audio, and so I need a way to feed the Wii U audio from the HDMI cable into something else. I thought I'd seen HDMI audio splitters in the past for just this very thing, but I'm not having much success at the moment.
Yes, I know I won't get surround -- I just want to get audio from HDMI to stereo rca jacks, or something like that.
I recently got my hands on a surplus monitor with DVI-D input and I plan to use it as a backup Wii U device, among other things.
I managed to finally track down an HDMI to DVI adaptor (harder than it sounds) at the local Frys, and the Wii U is spitting out a nice image to the monitor. 720p, but it's decent enough for the moment...
Is there a non-stupidly-expensive way to "extract"/split the audio from the HDMI cable into something more analog friendly? DVI doesn't do audio, and so I need a way to feed the Wii U audio from the HDMI cable into something else. I thought I'd seen HDMI audio splitters in the past for just this very thing, but I'm not having much success at the moment.
Yes, I know I won't get surround -- I just want to get audio from HDMI to stereo rca jacks, or something like that.
I always like to recommend something like the HDMI to DVI cable Amazon offers (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001TH7T2U/?tag=neogaf0e-20), they seem to be more readily available than adaptors.
If your monitor doesn't support HDMI audio via its DVI port, you are pretty much out of luck: While there are boxes available that strip the audio out of HDMI, in general they tend to produce low-quality (background noise, hiss) audio because they were built very cheaply. You may find one that works okay, but it's not an easy purchase.
An AV-Receiver is your best option, but that certainly isn't very cheap.
i bought a box like: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007MJKEPS/ But obviously read reviews to try mitigate risk of buying crap
I got a $5 adapter that seems to work quite well... although it took a lot of effort to find it.
It seems like there should be a simple DAC out there for just this sort of thing, but I suppose I overestimated something. Where there ever very many of these things around back when the DVI/HDMI shift first started?
I'm getting the impression that $30-$50 is what I'd expect to pay. Drat.
kurtrussell
Banned
For people with systems that do not have HDMI inputs (such as some relatively recent sound bar surround systems), you may want to take a look at the Ambery 2-In-1 HDMI LPCM to Analog Multi-Channel Audio Decoder With Amplifier
Does anyone know if current Wii U titles have 5.1 LPCM support?
I have my Wii U hooked to my Onkyo TX-NR616 through HDMI and if the Wii U sound
setup is on stereo i get a 2.1 LPCM signal which then gets coverted into THX Games PLIIx (which is my default output signal) so i get sound from all speakers.
However, when i set my Wi U sound setup to surround i get a 5.1 LPCM signal but no audio comes from the surround speakers, only stereo (even when playing Nintendoland).
Normal?
I have my Wii U hooked to my Onkyo TX-NR616 through HDMI and if the Wii U sound
setup is on stereo i get a 2.1 LPCM signal which then gets coverted into THX Games PLIIx (which is my default output signal) so i get sound from all speakers.
However, when i set my Wi U sound setup to surround i get a 5.1 LPCM signal but no audio comes from the surround speakers, only stereo (even when playing Nintendoland).
Normal?
Yeah, normal. Both NSMB U and Nintendoland only have a stereo sound (technically, the rears and LFE are getting 'silence' being sent to them, so it is a 5.1 mix).
Nintendo lol
Bony Manifesto
Member
Have they not fixed that in a patch? The rear speakers getting silence isn't necessarily a problem for a 2D game, but not having anything sent to the LFE channel is an amateur mistake. I suppose it doesn't matter at all for 2D Mario games as the sound design is terrible anyway, but I hope they realise it's a problem for future games - I don't wan't to be playing Zelda in stereo without any bass!
Bumping an oldie here but I recently purchased the TX-SR313 on sale and it does give me LPCM 5.1 with the Wii U. Fantastic budget receiver.
Just to clarify, if I buy this receiver, can I then have a Toslink optical audio cable going from it to my Bluray home theater system so I can have 5.1 surround?
So basically
Wii U ---HDMI---> TX-SR313 ---Toslink--->Sony Bluray Player (with its own proprietary connections to each of its 5.1 speakers) = 5.1 surround sound?
Nostremitus
Member
Awesome, thanks!
Marty Chinn
Member
No.
megabytecr
Member
Just got a BOSE Cinemate Series for movies, games and music. I am loving them. Very simple, just two speakers and a bass, but they have a propietary truspace technology. Really impressed so far and very easy to set up.
But it only has digital audio and RCA as inputs, so no 5.1 for me on Wii U, bummer. I will get a decent receiver, I will need one, hope to get one with radio and CD, I dont need anything fancy.
Even though I dont have 5.1 I tried ZombiU and CoD Black Ops 2. It has so much power, CoD, specially did not sound so bad after all.
So basically the advantage I have by using the speakers is just pure power, but the sound is the same as using the jack on the gamepad with headphones?
But it only has digital audio and RCA as inputs, so no 5.1 for me on Wii U, bummer. I will get a decent receiver, I will need one, hope to get one with radio and CD, I dont need anything fancy.
Even though I dont have 5.1 I tried ZombiU and CoD Black Ops 2. It has so much power, CoD, specially did not sound so bad after all.
So basically the advantage I have by using the speakers is just pure power, but the sound is the same as using the jack on the gamepad with headphones?
Count Dookkake
Member
.