Looking for an audio card with HDMI output

Steinberg Lounge
1

I was wondering if anyone here knows of a PCIe audio card with an HDMI output. I’m surprised that I couldn’t find any online. HDMI is a great way to send audio to a receiver, but using the output in a typical graphics card is a headache because of the infamous HDMI handshake that starts turning monitors on and off until they all did the stupid handshake and things return to normal.

While Windows has the ability to disable the audio part of any HDMI or Displayport output (an advantage over macOS, which it cannot), it can’t do the opposite, disable the video portion and just send audio.

But HDMI can carry audio easily up to 24 bit / 192 Khz, and having an audio card that can send audio to the receiver separately from all the ports in the graphics card would be a huge advantage, not different from using the USB interface, where you don’t have to put up with monitors turning off and on and waiting until all that mess is done with.

Even if the card needs to send a black 1080i signal like 4K Blu-ray players do on their audio-only HDMI port, that would fine because it wouldn’t interfere with the graphics card outputs.

Does anyone know about such a card?

2

It is a video connection, no video means no audio as well. It has no capability to sync audio only.

3

Yes, I know that HDMI has to carry video as well. But most 4K Blu-ray players have two HDMI outputs, one for video and one for audio. If both are connected, meaning one going straight to the TV set and the audio one going to the receiver, the audio one carries the audio, and the video is just a 1080i black video signal.