PC to TV - no sound

Ok, despite what many people will tell you actually can get audio from a DVI to HDMI connection, providing that your card has a SPDIF (S/PDIF) output.

The (super-scary) definition of SPDIF (S/PDIF): protocol or physical layer that carries digital audio signal between devices. Well, all we care about is the fact that if your graphic card has a SPDIF output you will be able to get sound on your TV when connecting the PC and the TV with a DVI to HDMI cable.

So, how do I know if my graphic card has a SPDIF output?

Check the card manual, but if you have purchased the card in the past six months then there’s a good chance that your graphic card will have SPDIF. The bad news is that in most cases you will have to connect the SPDIF output from your graphic card to your motherboard with a small cable, conveniently named SPDIF cable and the worse news is that even though you might have paid a few hundred dollars for your graphic card that cable might have not been included. And you have two options: buy a SPDIF cable for your graphic card (the wiser choice) or butcher one of those old audio cables (that we used to connect our CD ROMS to the motherboard in order to get sound).

No matter what you do, you will have to connect the cable correctly – the SPDIF pin from the graphic card to the SPDIF pin on the motherboard and the ground pin from the graphic card to the ground pin on the motherboard.

If you get that wrong you might damage your card or your computer!!!!

…although many will argue that this is very unlikely. Whatever the case, you better get it right the first time. You should refer to your card and your motherboard documentation in order to find which pin is which, but in most cases the black wire on the SPDIF cable will be the ground. Take a look at the pics below to see what the SPDIF output and the SPDIF cables look like (they might be different for different graphic cards of course).

Once you get the SPDIF cable connected from the graphic card to the motherboard, plug in your PC, connect the DVI to HDMI cable to the computer and your TV and boot up. If you have done it all correctly you should hear sound on your TV now.

PS You might need to change the playback settings on your computer - in Windows 7 right click on the speaker icon in the right-hand side of the taskbar, click “playback devices” and then right click on the “digital audio S/PDIF” and tick the “set as default device” option.