Ok... so i had my 360 for forever and I always have played it with composite cable on my computer monitor, or used hdmi on a HDTV.... now... i changed monitors last Christmas, so my xbox had been unused to a whole year, because i had no composite, and when i used an hdmi cable, i could not hook up that to a surround sound. So my monitor hooked up perfectly, but i didn't get any sound from it. So i forgot about it for a whole year, and now that i have some games that i want to play i decided to research my problem a little.

I now know that my monitor being an LG that receives HDMI and has no speakers on the monitor, has a headphone outlet on the back. So what i did was buy a cable that has a headphone connection and on the other end the audio regular ones that i hooked to my surround sound. I hooked my computer to test it with an hdmi cable to the monitor and changed the sound on my settings, and voila! i had surround sound through my monitor. Obviously i thought this would the same case for my xbox, but for some reason it works on the hdmi but no sound comes out. I troubled shoot it by changing the cable input, going into the settings in the xbox but nothing, and i know it works because my computer is using the same logic to hook up through the hdmi on my monitor. So... any ideas? or why the xbox would not work? i will keep searching the world wide web for solutions... but i thought i would ask here.

Its weird what one comes up with to fix this kind of issues... i could always play my ps3 on my monitor, cuz i would just attach my hdmi cable to my monitor, and then hook up the regular connection on the ps3 and hook up that to my surround sound. In the settings you can actually pick which cable is doing what. But the 360 doesn't have enough space to hook the regular cables, and an hdmi... the hdmi won't fit under that big block. Anyways... any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

Oh god, more wiring problems. The horror... The horror... (Bought aging family members an HDTV, dealt with some 'issues' with their wiring)

The first question I've got to ask is what sort of receiver you're routing through (if any). It doesn't support HDMI, from the sounds of it, but honestly, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference in the short term. For what an Xbox 360 is putting out, component cables are fine until you can get a proper receiver setup.

So who wants to start in on the 'HDMI causing audio interference debate'?

I'm using exactly the same setup, I only have an old school Yamaha AV receiver with phono inputs on and no HDMI/Optical and since I've got 4 sources running through the TV (PS3/Xbox/PS2/Wii) the best option is to run all sources through the TV, and then connect the headphone out to the Amp. Not only does this mean I get the sound through the AV unit, it means I don't have to switch sources on the amp, because it's all going through the same source (TV phono out > Amp).

I really can't see why your sound isn't working through HDMI... I've never had an issue. A few things you could try;

1. Obvious one, try making sure the cables are properly plugged in on both ends.

2. I can't recall whether the 360 has these settings but I know the PS3 does; can you specify which output sends audio and which sends video? For example, are you sending audio over component and video over HDMI (which would obviously result in no sound).

3. With your Xbox running and connected, turn off your display (Turn it off with the power button on the display, not just put it in standby) wait a few seconds, then switch back on. IIRC HDMI has a kind of 'power saving' mode, notably on LG displays, which can sometimes switch audio signals off.

4. Try another 360 in your monitor if you have access to one, or try your PS3 over HDMI into your monitor (sending both audio/video from the PS3 over HDMI).

That's all I can think of I'm afraid. As I said, I'm running the same setup and haven't had any probs.

I haven't done this myself, but what I have seen others do is to take apart the shell of the composite connector on the 360 end, and get rid of that big chunk of plastic that's blocking the HDMI port. That will allow you to do the same setup as you did with your PS3 that's HDMI to video and composite to audio.
http://www.chadledford.com/?p=50

The second solution is to buy an official 360 HDMI cable that comes with an audio adapter that allows you either the RCA or S/PDIF output.
There seems to be some third party adapters floating around the internet for less than 10 bucks, try a little search on them.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937899/en-us

And the third way to go is the VGA cable.
http://hardware.teamxbox.com/reviews...D-AV-Cable/p1/

Edited for links~

Toslink cable. If your surround sound isn't too old, it should have a hookup. The xbox came with a toslink adapater on the older systems and its built into the box on the slim versions.

There is also one built into the ps3. you just have to set both to use digital audio output when its hooked up. It'll route the audio through the optical cable (toslink)

If you don't fancy doing that, there are nifty adapter that let you port various styles of audio cable into toslink so you can still plug old rca jacks or 3.5mm headphone jackes etc into a toslink adapater and plug that into the box.

They're not very expensive. In fact you can get the cable off amazon for dirt cheap. Even heavy duty ones. I personally like the actual Amazon Brand toslink cables. they're about as clost to monster cables as you'll get for 1/10 the price.

Amazon
Buy this and never look back.

You might think that it's not the right cable for this kind of equipment. But trust me, this technology is so advanced that I am using AKDL1 to connect my HI-FI, PC, oven and toaster ALL at the same time. I am not sure how it works, but the manual said something about space warps, quantum realities and time travellers. Who cares, it works so well that it does not transport a digital signal anymore. If you move it close to your ear you will hear children's laughter. Five stars

Wow... i didn't know they made a special official 360 HDMI cable that comes with an audio adapter that allows you either the RCA or S/PDIF output.

Last night i tinkered with the xbox again, and tried some menu setups in my monitor, and for some reason it works now. How? I don't know. But I am definitely gonna try and check those cables out. Some of those seem better anyways, and buying cheap sometimes causes more problems than spending the extra cash.

thanks for the tips guys!

My old elite came with a extra dongle for RCA Audio and Optical if you were using HDMI, It was slim enough compared to the standard Component/Composite Cable dongle.

this:


I did somthing similar to my Dell monitor, 5.1, but no speakers. Took me awhile to get my audio out of my HDMI (PS3) to come out the headphone jacks. It took fiddling with the monitor audio settings as well as the PS3 Audio settings. (making sure they're both using the same decoding methods/sound channels etc)

you can also buy that dongle with an HDMI cable for around 40 bucks.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but is there a way to plug an Xbox onto a monitor with a standard DVI port? Will this allow me to play games in 1080p as well? I have a VGA port on my monitors as well, but I really really would like to play on my 1920x1080!
Thanks!

how about this?

Prophecies, sure you can, dude.

- xbox360 vga cable

just figure out where to plug audio. mine goes into guitar amplifier.)

and yeah you get 1080 no sweat. The only difference is that signal is analogue not digital so it's more prone to some kind of physical interference and ghosting problems and stuff.

This is my setup.



NOTE: You need to break the plastic off in order to fit the HDMI