How can I pull this off ...

BatRastard · November 25, 2021

I tried this a few years ago on my i5 4670k and had lots of issues - mostly with Steam and Big Picture Mode - but now that I got a better rig, I want to give it another shot ...

First off, the rig ...

MSI B550 A Pro

Ryzen 5 3600

16GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4

GeForce GTX 1050 To OC

Creative SB ZxR PCIe Sound Card

Windows 10 21H2

I have an ACER 1080p monitor as my primary and my Vizio V505-G9 4K as secondary. I can no longer game or do much of anything at my desk anymore because of a painful medical condition (ulnar nerve compression) causing numbness in my left shoulder, arm, and two fingers. When I sit on my couch and game on my PS4, I don't have the issue as badly.

What I want to do is configure my PC -- with Steam, GOG, and Epic -- so that I can game on the 4K TV with sound going through the sound bar instead of through the desktop speakers (i.e Creative ZxR) but when I tried this a few years back, it was a disaster. Steam would often crash on the 4K or Big Picture Mode would stay locked at 1080p and the sound would be on the desktop speakers ...

Do I have to temporarily disable the ACER 1080p and the SB ZxR so that the 4K becomes the default primary display and sound source (and just re-enable them when I'm done) or is there a third party app that can be configured to do this on the fly or through a macro?!? Or has Big Picture Mode matured enough (at least where Steam is concerned)?!?

Any help or advice is appreciated!

And before anyone asks, the Sound Blaster stays. I'm constantly listening to music (and so are my neighbors) and there's no way I'm tolerating Krokus, Kansas, Spock's Beard, Tzan Niko, Styx, Yes, or Dream Theater using onboard Realtek crap ...

BiotechBen · November 25, 2021

50 minutes ago, BatRastard said:

I tried this a few years ago on my i5 4670k and had lots of issues - mostly with Steam and Big Picture Mode - but now that I got a better rig, I want to give it another shot ...

First off, the rig ...

MSI B550 A Pro

Ryzen 5 3600

16GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4

GeForce GTX 1050 To OC

Creative SB ZxR PCIe Sound Card

Windows 10 21H2

I have an ACER 1080p monitor as my primary and my Vizio V505-G9 4K as secondary. I can no longer game or do much of anything at my desk anymore because of a painful medical condition (ulnar nerve compression) causing numbness in my left shoulder, arm, and two fingers. When I sit on my couch and game on my PS4, I don't have the issue as badly.

What I want to do is configure my PC -- with Steam, GOG, and Epic -- so that I can game on the 4K TV with sound going through the sound bar instead of through the desktop speakers (i.e Creative ZxR) but when I tried this a few years back, it was a disaster. Steam would often crash on the 4K or Big Picture Mode would stay locked at 1080p and the sound would be on the desktop speakers ...

Do I have to temporarily disable the ACER 1080p and the SB ZxR so that the 4K becomes the default primary display and sound source (and just re-enable them when I'm done) or is there a third party app that can be configured to do this on the fly or through a macro?!? Or has Big Picture Mode matured enough (at least where Steam is concerned)?!?

Any help or advice is appreciated!

And before anyone asks, the Sound Blaster stays. I'm constantly listening to music (and so are my neighbors) and there's no way I'm tolerating Krokus, Kansas, Spock's Beard, Tzan Niko, Styx, Yes, or Dream Theater using onboard Realtek crap ...

One thing you CAN do is have the monitor supersamoles to 4k sot that both are the same "resolution", and in the windows settings you should be able to chose the output device for sound. if your soundbar has HDMI/audio passthru or even the tv, it makes even more straightforward. You may need an audio cable of your choosing, to bring the sound to the soundbar from the passthru on the tv if it has it.

Soundblaster->soundbar->tv. And then you can go in windows and when you want the tv to be where content goes, you can alter the setting for which display is display 1 and 2 (takes about 10 seconds to do at most).

BatRastard · November 25, 2021

The sound bar is hooked to the 4K by both an optical cable and analog cable (I often switch between the two as one is louder than the other depending on the source). In no way, shape, or form do I want gaming audio on the SoundBlaster - I want it to use Nvidia Audio through the HDMI so that the TV will pass it through the sound bar. My TV is on the North wall of my living room but the desk and PC is on the Eastern wall and there's just no way to play an FPS like Doom if everything to the left of me sounds like it's coming from the right!

BatRastard · November 28, 2021

Just wasted 3 hours ...

Although the issues I had years ago are mostly gone, the biggest problem is most of my games start off full screen, in a low resolution, and/or defaults to 60hz ... which the 4K TV can't display at all as it seems to be locked at 30hz (but 60hz at 2160p does work on the Windows desktop). Anyway, all these prevent me from configuring them unless the ACER is enabled and active, and sometimes that's isn't enough. Gauntlet: Slayer Edition for example ... it froze my 4KTV up solid with stuttering sound unless I pressed ALT+TAB which brought up the desktop and sound on the soundbar! Nice! But clicking the game window forces full screen again, and NO SIGNAL warning on the 4K. Long story short I'd spend way too much time editing config files and hacking the registry to force these games to default to a windowed mode until I can get them configured correctly on the 4K that I might as well not even brother and try to play them at my desk as much as the pain will let me ...