Would an HDMI cable from a PC carry surround audio?

[R.STEED]

I've just copied my 5.1 surround DVD of Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' to an MKV on my PC. Can this MKV file be played in surround. And if so, do HDMI cables carry surround 5.1 audio from my PC to my Smart TV?
Richard Steed

[DB83]

Yes AND No.

A HDMI cable can carry up to 8 channels of audio. So imagine that your 5+1 channels are allowed.

However unless your tv has 5 internal speakers plus a sub-woofer then you will not get 5.1 surround sound. Methinks you do not appreciate just what surround sound really is.

Your tv might mix those 5+1 channels down to 2 (stereo). But that is not what you really want is it ?

[redwudz]

Depends on your PC. I have a surround sound amplifier that uses digital audio (SP/DIF), so I don't use the HDMI audio.
If your PC outputs audio to your HDMI cable and your TV can play it, Yes. Check your PC/sound card specifications.
Not all sound cards have a HDMI audio capability. I would just plug in the HDMI cable and try it.

[R.STEED]

Well the sound comes out of my Sony Smart 4k tv's stereo speakers so it carries audio, but I want to buy a 5.1 speaker system for my Smart tv. i wondered if my tv would play 5.1 audio from my pc.

[turk690]

Various combinations of sound cards, video cards (where HDMI out is going to be taken from), device drivers, Windows settings, and the intended smart TV can affect whether or not audio will be output along with video through HDMI and the form it takes. Ideally, plugging an HDMI device that can output audio (smart TV) should automatically make this device the default audio output. But some sound cards, which default to 2-ch analog output, require deliberate driver settings to be setup to change this to output over HDMI; to get to this stage, a separate driver may have to be installed 1st just to get the audio output over HDMI option. Worse, as red said, some sound cards DO NOT support porting their output over HDMI.
In case audio is output over HDMI, some apps do not take advantage of, or allow an original 5.1-ch mix to to output, truncating it to just 2-ch. Versions of PowerDVD that come bundled with a blu-ray writer are like this; only paying for the full version will allow the 5.1-ch mix to get out.
Note that, stand-alone smart TVs are 2-ch. Full-fledged 5.1-ch mixes coming in through the HDMI port along with the video will necessarily be remixed by the TV to 2-ch. The 5.1-ch audio, however, may be taken out of the smart TV optical audio SPDIF out (after setting up the TV to do so, if it permits that), connected to a system that will decode this for you to hear the 5.1-ch in all its original glory.
But, SPDIF only permits 5.1-ch if it's either Dolby Digital or DTS. In a sample scenario where you might be playing a blu-ray disc (if your computer has a BD drive), or a media file that genuinely has a DTS-HD master audio track, that 5.1-ch audio might get as far as the TV HDMI input; not clear if the TV will strip the core DTS track and pass it through the SPDIF out, or mix it all down to 2-ch, or only does this for Dolby digital and not DTS, or whether you even have a choice there.

[sneaker]

not clear if the TV will strip the core DTS track and pass it through the SPDIF out, or mix it all down to 2-ch, or only does this for Dolby digital and not DTS, or whether you even have a choice there.

Yes, depends on the TV and sound system. Basically, if you have PC + TV + audio receiver you may have:

PC --HDMI--> receiver --HDMI--> TV
or
PC --HDMI--> TV --HDMI--> receiver
or
PC --HDMI--> TV --SPDIF--> receiver (as turk said SPDIF is only DD/AC3, DTS or stereo PCM, not DTS-HD MA or other fancy things)
or
PC --HDMI--> TV
PC --HDMI--> receiver
or
PC --HDMI--> TV
PC --SPDIF--> receiver

The first solution is the simplest/most common. You just connect the PC and the audio receiver via HDMI and the audio receiver and the TV via HDMI as well. The audio receiver will grab the audio and pass through the video to the TV. It works with all kind of audio, DD, DTS, DTS-HD MA, Atmos, DTS-X ...

[pandy]

"Any" HDMI cable works the same (exception are some fancy tricky signal processing cables such as Marseille Inc mCable).
Your limitations are software and hardware capabilities of your signal source and your signal receivers (so called in HDMI terminology Sink).

Btw HDMI is limited to 8 audio channels when they are PCM - if they are compressed then HDMI is limited only by codec itself (so AAC can be even 48 channel).