Windows 7 Surround Sound Problem

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giraffe2010

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Hey guys, just installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and I'm having an issue with my 5.1 surround sound. 7 picked up my audio chipset (ADI AD2000B) and already had drivers for it. When I go to the sound configuration utility in control panel and set up my speakers for 5.1, sound comes from all of them when I test them. However, when running applications that use sound (mostly WMP and VLC) I only get sound out of front left speaker and front right speaker, none of the other speakers are producing sound. The drivers for my sound aren't out for 7 yet but i installed the Vista 64 bit drivers and it made no difference. I have reviewed the sound settings 50 times but to no avail. Bottom line is, the speakers all test fine in the sound configuration but no application, not even Windows itself, will use all of them. All that is used is front left and front right. Thanks in advance!!
 
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Figured it out. If you right click on the soundmax icon in the system tray, you need to check the "power" option. I have no idea why that one setting kept my speakers from working.

giraffe2010

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Alright, I tested the speakers with the driver utility and they all tested fine. I reinstalled the driver utility and tested again and they all test fine. But my applications are only using front right and front left.
 

slo

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In Xp windows media player played stereo sources mirrored on all speakers. Vista and 7 only play stereo on the left and right channel (the correct way) unless and the software used can send in (mirror it) to other channels.

 

giraffe2010

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Figured it out. If you right click on the soundmax icon in the system tray, you need to check the "power" option. I have no idea why that one setting kept my speakers from working.
 
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Charles Etheridge

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Hi, I have Logitech Z5300 5.1 speaker set and am using a Creative Titanium sound card, the basic $99 variety. I have the Logitech plugged into the sound card with Windows 7 64bit and it all works beautifully all the time. The only problem I have is that one audio source uses a fiber optic connection, and though the sound card has a Toslink input I haven't yet been able to get any sound from that, but this was also the case with Vista 32bit. The challenge now is to find a sound card with a S/PDIF connection that uses an RCA coax cable.
 

Hothar

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This only works if you have the matrix switch enabled which allws the speaker hardware to send to all speakers
 
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open ur realtek sound manager ....in the speakers section there is advanced settings ...click and then select play two different audio streams for front and rear speakers
 

Matthias99

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open ur realtek sound manager ....in the speakers section there is advanced settings ...click and then select play two different audio streams for front and rear speakers

This setting does not deal with stereo upmixing; it has to do with whether the rear-panel audio outputs are automatically muted when you plug headphones into the front panel headphone jack.

This mostly seems to be an issue with motherboards that use Realtek onboard audio. The Realtek HD drivers for Windows 7 do not currently appear to offer a stereo upmix feature, which is what allows 2-channel stereo to be played back on more than two speakers. So even if the rear speakers are recognized in the test utility, when you play normal stereo audio sources, sound will only come out of the "front left" and "front right" speakers (unless you use a program that has its own upmix functionality). This seems likely to be a bug: some of their earlier drivers offered this, and the drivers offer many *other* modes that upmix and modify stereo audio output, just not a simple surround upmix.

To fix this:

Ideally, Realtek should add back in the "surround fill" option that was there in some of their other (non-Win7) drivers. If that option is there, just check it and you should be set. You might want to try the latest drivers from the Realtek website to see if they have fixed this. As of 7/21/2010, the latest drivers (R2.50) do not have this option, at least in Windows 7 64-bit.

If that option is not there:

They *do* have another mode that will do this, but it may slightly affect the sound output. If you go under the "Sound Effects" tab in the audio manager, changing the "Environment" setting to "Room" will effectively cause a stereo surround upmix. (All of the modes will do a stereo upmix, but most of the other ones apply various effects that will make your music sound terrible. This one is close to neutral.)

Another option -- if your motherboard's chipset supports it -- is to use Dolby upmixing. This *also* may slightly affect the sound quality, although probably less than using their effects panel. To do this, go to Control Panel->Sound, select the "Speakers" output device, and hit the "Properties" button. This should open up a tabbed window with a bunch of settings. If you have a "Dolby" tab, go to it and check the "Dolby Prologic IIx" checkbox (or whatever option is there). This will remix stereo sound into 5.1 or 7.1. If there is no "Dolby" tab, then your motherboard does not support Dolby upmixing.

Another possible solution is to set all the jacks where your speakers are plugged in to "Front Speaker Output". This will cause the driver to send the same 2-channel output to all the speakers. However, this will break anything that tries to play real 5.1 or 7.1 audio, since the side and rear audio is then not going anywhere!

Realtek also offers a utility on their website called "3D Soundback". This may be helpful, although it has to be configured on a per-application basis. It is also designed for Windows Vista, so it may not work properly under Win7.
 

zdrash

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thanks a lot
its work :)
 
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