Does HDMI Out Graphics Cards (PCIe 2.0) support Audio?

[Guest]

There are PCIe graphics cards that support HDMI output.
HDMI does support Audio. So do these modern PCIe graphics cards hardware & associated software drivers come with Audio support?

On say Windows 7 or 10, I should be able to select the HDMI Audio device from the graphics card in addition to the motherboards on board line-out audio output.

It seems except for mention of HDMI out, specifications of Graphics cards don’t mention anything about audio. Thanks.

 

[Solandri]

There are PCIe graphics cards that support HDMI output.
HDMI does support Audio. So do these modern PCIe graphics cards hardware & associated software drivers come with Audio support?

Yes.

On say Windows 7 or 10, I should be able to select the HDMI Audio device from the graphics card in addition to the motherboards on board line-out audio output.

Unfortunately, it's either/or. Windows doesn't support simultaneous output of a single audio stream to two output devices. So you can either output audio to the HDMI device, or to the line-out audio. You can't do both at the same time. You can send different audio streams to different audio outputs, but you can't send the same stream to multiple outputs. A serious oversight IMHO in this day and age when lots of people have external speakers + HDMI monitors/TVs with built in speakers.

There's a hack out there to sort of do it. It involves coupling the microphone port to the line-out, then redirecting that microphone's input (since it's considered a separate audio input by Windows) to the HDMI audio out. But it introduces a slight delay making it useless for simultaneous output (sounds like an echo). It can be useful if you're trying to send audio to another room, or someone is using headphones though. If you need it I can look for the link describing how to set it up again.

Otherwise you'll have to pull audio out of the HDMI device and send it to the speakers. Or either use an (expensive) adapter to pull analog audio out of the HDMI cable, or input analog audio into the HDMI cable and use a splitter on the line-out.

 

[Guest]

Great. Thanks Solandri for clarifying my doubts.