Long, complex question & problem

[ambrandt42]

Okay... I should probably mention right off the bat that this post won't fully fit into just the Hardware Discussion forum, but seeing as it's all (I think) hardware related, hopefully it'll work.

I should probably start off by listing my machines specs:
ECS A780GM-M3 AM2+/AM3 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X3 3.1GHz
SAPPHIRE 100253HDMI Radeon HD 4650 512MB (as a low-profile card) (outputting all graphics through a Vizio VX37L... not exactly top of the line, but it's the best I've got for the time being)
nMEDIAPC Black Aluminum / Acrylic / Steel HTPC 1080P (HTPC case)
OCZ Onyx OCZSSD2-1ONX32G (boot/OS drive... SSD drive... fast as all-get-out)
a couple ancient 8gig IDE drives for a little storage... all the MP3's and stuff is on other 'puters on the network
4gigs Corsair XMS2 1066 RAM
Windows 7 Professional x64
and what's giving me so much trouble... an nMEDIAPC PRO-LCD.

And, now... the problem!
When I first received the LCD and the Onyx, I slapped both in this machine (an Athlon II x2 with 2gigs 667 RAM) and installed Win7 on the Onyx and the LCD on a phonebook in its anti-static bag (it was a temporary thing). It worked great, even the sound visualization function. So, once I got all the rest of it, I slapped it together and tested it using this monitor and keyboard and mouse and it still worked great. Then for some reason I had to reinstall and that's where the problem started. From then on, it seems no matter what I try, everything except the PC Sound function works. I reinstalled yesterday and even tried installing the driver and software that came with it without the display plugged in and the driver installation installed as an admin and still nothing, except now I get a pulsating input from somewhere (seems to be the rear mic, even though there's nothing plugged in on it... if I disable the rear mic, the pulsing input signal to the display's sound interpretation thingy vanishes and I'm left with no sound viz).
Other than that one problem (which is the same in WMP and PC Sound... don't have Winamp installed on the HTPC, so I can't try that one). From the sound of the phantom audio signal, it sounds similar to the 60Hz signal that got fed back through a mixing board when I was trying to record the mixers output on my Sony camcorder (was filming a concert and wanted to use the audio from the board, but the camcorder's powered mic input ended up sending a 60Hz "signal" to the board, and probably would have sent it to the speakers if the mixer hadn't muted the output).
Does the sound viz have some oddball requirement of having the front audio ports plugged in (had problems with it before, so I unplugged it and now that the fifth case fan is partially blocking it, it's a pain to get it plugged in... with only two or even three case fans, the GPU runs at 90C and processor at about 75C... poor airflow through the case I think)?
Unfortunately, I didn't write down exactly what I did to get it to work before when I had the LCD and Onyx running on this machine, so I can't simply duplicate it on the media center step-for-step.

I'm wondering if the software could be the culprit... maybe it has something against the way that board handles the audio (before, the audio was running to a pair of JBL computer speakers through the onboard rear ports of an ASUS M2A-VM... now that it's in the nMedia case and sitting pretty in the entertainment center, it's outputting the audio through HDMI to the TV, where the TV routes the audio to its speakers and also the stereo when it's on)... could outputting the audio through the video card's HDMI-out prevent it from getting to the LCD's software's PC Sound graphic thing?

Is there a better software that would do everything this LCD's software can (custom graphics, sound viz, Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player, etc. etc.) but do it better? How about adding RSS feeds into everything in the parentheses? What is there besides what came with it and LCDSmartie and LCDWriter for software for these types of displays? Anything worthwhile?
Could it be something to do with the display itself?
I'm a computer nerd but I'm completely new to these computer-mounted LCD displays (unless you count owning two laptops as computer-mounted LCDs... )
Any help would be appreciated!
Or any pointers in the right direction would be great.

Thanks,
Aaron B.

Oh... almost forgot... if you want, I can get video of it doing its pulsing thing (and the audio from it) and post it someplace and post a link to it here. Let me know if that would be worth recording and I'll post it someplace.

[caesar]

could outputting the audio through the video card's HDMI-out prevent it from getting to the LCD's software's PC Sound graphic thing?

There you have your problem. The software uses the stereo mixer to record audio and display it to lcd. Having audio routed digitally through HDMI no signal is present on the analog recording mixer.
Slap a microphone to record sound from the TV and you'll have the thing going again.
Or route the sound through analog... I bet you won't pick this.

[ambrandt42]

Okay... got the display working, but as long as the HDMI cable is plugged into the computer from the TV, the TV defaults to looking for audio over HDMI, even though the computer isn't sending it over HDMI (using a stereo patch cable from an MP3 player... 2 RCA jacks to one 1/4" headphones jack). If I unplug the HDMI cable, I get audio through the TV, but no video. Quite the interesting problem.
I even tried disabling the HDMI audio driver in device manager and in the BIOS and nothing, so I enabled HDMI audio in the BIOS while leaving it disabled in Device Manager and still no dice.
Now... Blu-Ray requires that the display be hooked up via HDMI or DVI-D (which as far as I know are the only two that are HDCP-compliant), right? I couldn't just use VGA-out from the GPU and audio out from the motherboard for Blu-Ray playback and still get 1080 output, could I?
This is a real stumper. I'll keep looking around online for anything that might help, too.
Thanks,
Aaron B.

Edit: Oh... and the TV is question is a Vizio VX37L. I know... not the biggest or best, but it was what I could afford at the time (and I don't think the top of the entertainment center could support anything more... someday, I play to wall-mount the thing, but that'll have to wait until I can find a different entertainment center that'll hold all the old records and the component stereo and the HTPC and the VCR).

[ambrandt42]

Update: I had it working twice by total unrepeatable accident with the audio being routed through HDMI, but I have thus far been unable to replicate those results. I'll keep tinkering and this time if I get it, I won't touch the thing The first one I couldn't even begin to explain (happened to start tinkering with it after I got home from work), but the second one came after some careful thinking about it: I left the computer outputting audio over HDMI, and split the audio out from the TV to the stereo so it went TV --> stereo & computer rear mic in... and it suddenly worked! Then, I had to be an idiot and reboot the dang thing. Somehow, during the reboot, it lost the ability to display the sound viz from the mic in, so I tried line in and that worked, but being the nerd I am, I had to keep messing with it (wish I would have taken detailed notes about it all ).

Just out of curiosity... for a setup like mine, is there a way to "mirror" the HDMI audio via software and route it to whatever I want (Line In, Rear Mic In)?
Or, should I give up on it altogether?
Are there better displays out there that would do what I'm trying to accomplish here (Sound viz, possibly scroll a couple RSS feeds, song/video titles from Windows Media Center/Winamp/Windows Media Player (even better would be all those and media info from Cyberlink's PowerDVD), and maybe even some custom graphics like the nMediaPC display's default software can show)? Or, would I still run into the problem with the sound viz not working because of the darned HDMI problem?
I'd even be willing to try Beta software and software workarounds... like looped recording, then sending the recording immediately to the Stereo Mixer for display and deleting it as it plays (now that I think about it, something crazy like that could potentially work ) or modifying the registry so both Speakers & Redirected Headphones and HDMI audio out are both default output device at the same time or some other wild idea.
Anything you can think of would be great!

Thanks,
Aaron
n00b 4ever

[caesar]

I don't see how (not that I'm that knowledgeable).

HDMI is usually used for DD or DTS streams, only avi files come with other encoding. You'd need a lot of hacking to convert a DD and DTS stream to stereo to feed it to the analog part of the soundcard.

Most easy and straightforward way is to feed the sound from tv or receiver back to the line-in of the soundcard or use a small microfone to record the sound. Remember to check as input either stereo mixer or if you don't have this option, line in or mic.

[ambrandt42]

Well, when I did have that working (line out from TV to line in or mic in), as soon as I rebooted, it stopped working. I'm wondering if that might have just been something goofed up with the audio driver.
Probably tomorrow when I get home from work, I'll reinstall the sound card drivers and software and see if that fixes it.
Leave it to me to come up with something like this.

[ambrandt42]

Ah hah!
Figured out where some of the noise is coming from that shows up on the display... it's the buildings wiring! Just for giggles, I hooked up a 3-prong (grounded-type plug) to 2-prong with a ground grommet (sposed to be attached to a screw) on the entertainment center's surge strip and ran a hunk of wire to the buildings radiator heating pipe. Apparently, there much be a slight current in that pipe because as long as the wire is touching the pipe, the Pro-LCD shows pulses, but as soon as I disconnect the wire from the radiator, the pulses stop. I'm still searching for something that definitively says how risky it would be to run the computer ungrounded.
And (drum roll please)... I got the sound viz working! Turns out I can't have both Line In/Mic In enabled at the same time as Stereo Mix, but I have to have a split patch cord (TV sound out to two two-way splitters, one pair of split plugs runs to the stereo, the other to a MP3-player style patch cord) connected to whichever one is enabled, and now it works... even through reboots! Just had to make sure that whichever one is being used for the TV audio is set "speakers and redirected headphones" and listen to is selected in the properties for it.
So... yay!

Now, if only there was a way to speed up the refresh rate... seems the controller only works at 9600baud... I can select the other speeds, but they don't have any effect. The sound viz is just slightly out of sync with the audio, but if that's the best I can hope for, I can live with it.

[caesar]

Great news!

Regarding the speed, 9600bps is pretty limited, 57600bps would be better while 115200bps or USB (not serial adapters) should allow for the quickest refresh rate.
It depends on what that display adapter can crunch.