Sound question. Speaker, HDMI, and mobo related... somewhatFollow

Hello kind sirs and ma'ams.

I just built a new PC and I have a sinple question about the sound and a delay (very small delay) of it starting up on certain things.

What I am experiencing is something like this... On AOL when you sign on and you have mail you hear some idiot telling you, "You've Got mail!"... well... What I hear now is, "...got mail!".

I am running amplified speakers from my front and rear plug-ins on my I/O ports (back of PC). The wires goto an amp/sub which sends out the sound to four speakers (two front and two rear).

My monitor is hooked up via an HDMI plug, and the monitor has a sound output plug-in on it. (my EVGA 480 GTX supports audio over HDMI)

My questions are:

Do you think the delay is from the way the audio has to travel to get to the speakers?

Do you think it would be better to use a 3.5mm jack splitter so I can use the plug on the monitor for the sounds going to the amp? I know that would take away my front and rear sound, but shouldn't it still keep the right and left channels separate?

Is there something else that you think might be causing it?

It isn't a big deal or anything, because my mp3s and games seem fine with no sound delay, but I am really curious if hooking up the speakers from the monitor which gets its feed from an HDMI cable would make a difference...

Thanks.
Pent

Hmm, under the volume controls I can actually set the audio to output from one of the 3-4 different output ports.

The three I remember just off the top of my head are my monitor (via the HDMI cable), the 3.5mm plug-ins on the I/O ports (where the audio is coming from now), and the SPDIF or whatever.

I haven't tried the monitor plug yet, and I doubt I'll get to it tonight... maybe tomorrow.

Like I said, it isn't a dire need situation, but I have noticed that the audio (even on mp3s... I just tested it) almost always has a delay in it if there is no sound for awhile and then there is... it really isn't a delay, but more of a silence for a second of audio and then the rest of the sound is fine.

Maybe HDMI.

A couple things to consider...

First, I've seen HDMI audio from a HD5450 do much the same thing. Takes a split second for audio to click on for some reason, but once it's going it's fine. If that's the case, I'm not sure of the fix, but I can say that you're not the only one to have the problem.

Another possibility is your amplifier. Some will "sleep" when there's no audio going through them, and it can take a split second for it to start making sound. If you have issues with, say, ambient audio noises cutting in and out then that'd probably indicate that's more the issue.

Edited, Oct 11th 2010 9:12am by Isiolia

After searching around just a little bit I think the problem lies within the amp going into standby mode after 15min of no audio input.

I can not find if there is a way to actually turn standby mode off, so I'll have to live with it.

I can't complain too much... the mode is there so it isn't constantly "on" for safety/heat reasons...

And the sound from the speakers is downright awesome.

Since I am sure some of you will come back to read what othes have said... let me ask you this... I have used Winamp every since it came out and I have no problems with it, but I am curious if any of you used a different mp3 player... and does it have an EQ?

I am having the hardest time trying to setup the EQ in Winamp where it actually sounds good.