Output from PC ...how?

PC → TV → Beam

Don’t try to over complicate this.

• Using Sonos as PC Speakers Tutorial

The thread should cover all you want to know about getting PC audio into Sonos. It is a part of a group, and you may need to join the group to see the content.  Not sure on that.

I’m already outputting from my tv and it’s not working as 5.1.

Well it would have been useful to actually say that in the first place.

Getting DD 5.1 out of a PC requires you to configure the audio on the PC correctly, and often requires a codec license from Dolby. That usually comes with your video card. Also requires your TV audio settings to be correct, but as you have provided no details AT ALL about what hardware you have, good luck.

As @controlav says you need to provide more details about your setup such as what software you are using for playback, what audio formats and speaker layouts you can playback, TV setup, Windows version.

Assuming your TV is configured for pass-through, then sending DD 5.1 to the Sonos Beam and having it decode the audio stream depends on your playback software.

My Windows 10 PC supports speaker outputs for 2.0/5.1/7.1 pcm over hdmi natively.

Installing the free Dolby Access software also gives Dolby Atmos for HT as a speaker output format for free. Only Atmos for headphones has a cost.

My TV audio device properties in Windows supports Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-Audio and DTS-HD encoded formats. I have an AVR plugged into my TV, the Sonos Beam won’t list the same formats.

Depending on the software you use to play content there are usually two main ways the audio will be sent over hdmi.

1. The playback software decodes the encoded audio to PCM, down-mixing multi channel to match your Windows speaker setup as needed. The Sonos Beam will playback the PCM sent to it.
2. The playback software bitstreams the encoded audio format, such as DD 5.1, over hdmi untouched. The Beam will then decode the encoded audio stream and should identify it as a DD audio stream.

If you are only ever getting 2.0 PCM audio from multi-channel content then there are setting in the TV, Windows or your playback that need changing. It could be for one or more of multiple reasons, such as the TV isn’t allowing pass-through so Windows doesn’t recognise Dolby Digital as a supported format, your playback software on the PC is configured to decode and down-mix the audio to 2.0 rather than bit-streaming it, the playback software is unable to bitstream DD so decodes to 2.0 pcm as a fall back etc

On the rare occasions I do use my PC for content playback, I use VLC which automatically bitstreams all the audio formats in my content as my TV pass through and AVR support them. VLC default behaviour for content in a format it couldn’t automatically bitstream always used to be to decode to 2.0 PCM

Hi all, I worked out a setting on my tv for pass through.

I’m pretty new to this.

The pc was a fall back option, but it’s possible that I’ll move to pc at some stage anyway; my tv is pretty slow.

Thanks for the input.

I’ll come back to this when I make the change.

Yeah, I was worried that I couldn’t take a sound OUTPUT from the tv if I was using the hdmi INPUT for the pc.

I figure that I’d just get a different soundcard or gpu with hdmi output for sound and feed that in to the Beam.

Thanks all.

That won’t work: you need HDMI-ARC (or eARC) to the Beam, “HDMI Audio” is not going to fly.

There are two sets of audio connections on an HDMI-ARC (or HDMI-eARC) connector and a processor at both sockets to manage the connection. PC’s do not typically include this processor.