Surround sound doesn't work, need a little help. thx.

[JimiSlew]

So I built a new machine and all was well, or so I thought. The EVGA board comes with built in HD Realtek sound (no coax, just opitcal and analog) and I decided to plug my old, ancient, coax and analog (no optical) altec lan four speakers and a subwolfer system into the new machine.

Plugged in the analog front connector (from sub wolfer) speakers and set them to 'front'.

Plugged in analog 'surround' (from subwolfer) and set that to 'rear'

Went to play sound and only got the front speaker setting to work. Now I know these speakers work in surround setting b/c I tested them with my other comp.

I got up to date drivers, still no work. Switched to digital on/off only and still didn't work. I can set the speakers to prologic and sound comes out of the rear.

Fed up I installed my old creative SB live card that came with the computer (where I originally bought the speakers). Installed up to date drivers, disabled the realtek onboard sound... and...

same darn problem. front works, rear doesn't. Is there a setting I'm missing anywhere? I tried the control panel-sound-setting it to surround sound/quadphonic, etc. Nothing.

Anyone wana make my day?

Thanks,

Jim

New build:
EVGA 680i LT board
EVGA 8800 GTS 320
2x corsair 800 ram
Windows XP
WD hard disk and a DVD player.

 

[Paperdoc]

I had a similar problem with the Realtek sound system built into my ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe mobo. Then I stumbled across the solution. First, be sure you have loaded from the mobo's CD the Realtek Drivers, and maybe updated them from the mobo's website. When you right-click on the audio icon at bottom right you can Open the sound properties, or some such. Mine has many tabs to try, and on one of the I found a drop-down where you tell it which type of speaker system you are have connected. By default it was set to 2-channel. I chose 5.1 channel instead, and voila! Then on another tab there was a utility tester that lets you play a sound that moves around the room so you can balance out the speakers to get the effect right. There are also sound-space effects like an amphitheatre or a marble bathroom. They are fun, but they can really distort your sound for some things.

By the way, if you disconnect speakers and start over, the driver may detect that an reset itself to the default 2-channel setting, so check it again.

 

[Guest]

Hi, I had the same problem with my speakers, and what I did to fix it was very simple. First, unplug and replug in your speakers. Then, go to the Control Panel, then sounds and audio devices, then under Speaker Settings, click Advanced. Then go to the Performance tab, and make sure both slider bars are all the way up. Mine, for some reason, were not, which disabled the rear and center speakers. Also, just make sure that the Control Panel is set to 5.1 or whatever kind of system you have. Good luck!