Audio not working via HDMI, NVIDIA 2060 Acer CB272

PrettyUnclever

I recently purchased an Acer CB272 BIR 27'' monitor to accommodate my Dell desktop which is running with a Nvidia 2060 GPU. Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to the fact the monitor only has HDMI and VGA ports, whereas the 2060 has DP, DVI-A,HDMI. I just wanted to know if I can still achieve the 144 hz via HDMI cable, also the freesync?

StevenGen

PrettyUnclever said:

I recently purchased an Acer CB272 BIR 27'' monitor to accommodate my Dell desktop which is running with a Nvidia 2060 GPU. Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to the fact the monitor only has HDMI and VGA ports, whereas the 2060 has DP, DVI-A,HDMI. I just wanted to know if I can still achieve the 144 hz via HDMI cable, also the freesync?

To output 1080p content at 144Hz, you will need either a Dual-Link DVI, a DisplayPort, or an HDMI 1.4 or higher (though some monitors with HDMI 1.4 are limited to 60Hz or 120Hz) cable. For 144Hz at 1440p, you will need at least an HDMI 2.0 or a DisplayPort 1.2 while for 4K 144Hz you are going to need an HDMI 2.1 or alternatively, a DisplayPort 1.4 which maxes out at 120Hz without compression. With "FreeSybc" It should work via any HDMI switch that is purely just a switch (if there is ANY form of OSD, it's 100% out). Basically the cheap switches from ebay/Amazon should work, but higher end switches and AV receivers won't.

Just a short eplanation of HDMI: YES-HDMI is able to transmit audio in a variety of formats and bitrates from simple 2-channel PCM through multichannel codecs like the various flavors of Dolby Digital and DTS.

However, it's worth noting that it's not really designed to send audio in a standalone fashion. It requires an accompanying video signal, because the audio is transmitted in packets during the video's vertical blanking interval, and the amount of data that can be squeezed in there is determined by the pixel clock rate. At the lowest resolution settings from SDTV (e.g. 480i) there actually isn't enough bandwidth to transmit high bitrate surround sound, so the standard mandated support for "pixel doubled" low resolutions, where every pixel was transmitted twice and at double the normal pixel clock rate. This left enough room to squeeze multichannel audio in if needed.

The other audio that HDMI supports is "ARC", or a dedicated audio return channel from the display device. This allows TVs (e.g. with built in digital tv tuners) to transmit audio back to a separate receiver/amplifier for playback without having to have a separate cable from the one the receiver already uses to transmit other video sources to the display device. However, ARC is often limited to 2.0 channels or Dolby Digital only by the tv, so there may be limitations depending on how you connect sources to the tv or sound bar.

StevenGen

PrettyUnclever said:

I recently purchased an Acer CB272 BIR 27'' monitor to accommodate my Dell desktop which is running with a Nvidia 2060 GPU. Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to the fact the monitor only has HDMI and VGA ports, whereas the 2060 has DP, DVI-A,HDMI. I just wanted to know if I can still achieve the 144 hz via HDMI cable, also the freesync?

To output 1080p content at 144Hz, you will need either a Dual-Link DVI, a DisplayPort, or an HDMI 1.4 or higher (though some monitors with HDMI 1.4 are limited to 60Hz or 120Hz) cable. For 144Hz at 1440p, you will need at least an HDMI 2.0 or a DisplayPort 1.2 while for 4K 144Hz you are going to need an HDMI 2.1 or alternatively, a DisplayPort 1.4 which maxes out at 120Hz without compression. With "FreeSybc" It should work via any HDMI switch that is purely just a switch (if there is ANY form of OSD, it's 100% out). Basically the cheap switches from ebay/Amazon should work, but higher end switches and AV receivers won't.

Just a short eplanation of HDMI: YES-HDMI is able to transmit audio in a variety of formats and bitrates from simple 2-channel PCM through multichannel codecs like the various flavors of Dolby Digital and DTS.

However, it's worth noting that it's not really designed to send audio in a standalone fashion. It requires an accompanying video signal, because the audio is transmitted in packets during the video's vertical blanking interval, and the amount of data that can be squeezed in there is determined by the pixel clock rate. At the lowest resolution settings from SDTV (e.g. 480i) there actually isn't enough bandwidth to transmit high bitrate surround sound, so the standard mandated support for "pixel doubled" low resolutions, where every pixel was transmitted twice and at double the normal pixel clock rate. This left enough room to squeeze multichannel audio in if needed.

The other audio that HDMI supports is "ARC", or a dedicated audio return channel from the display device. This allows TVs (e.g. with built in digital tv tuners) to transmit audio back to a separate receiver/amplifier for playback without having to have a separate cable from the one the receiver already uses to transmit other video sources to the display device. However, ARC is often limited to 2.0 channels or Dolby Digital only by the tv, so there may be limitations depending on how you connect sources to the tv or sound bar.

PrettyUnclever

Very informative, thank you very much