Shoutbox

Ok so i have 5.1 surround speakers, but the rear ones dont sound right, its quiet and only some sounds come out. I have an Abit AV8 3rd Eye motherboard with 6 Channel sound, the motherboard has Realtek AC'87 audio and i've installed the latest (3.76? sorry, i have 3.91) drivers.

Anyone got any ideas?

The speakers do work, i've plugged them into the front ports and sound comes out fine. and yes, windows audio is set to 5.1 surround.

I think that's because most of the things you play like mp3 are stereo and you have to tell your surround software to mix stereo up to 5.1 else no sounds comes from the back.

I had the same thing with my 6.1 Creative Audigy set, but that has a feature called CMSS 3D and when I enabled that the sounds get mixed up right.

Maybe your surround software has the same feature or something like that.

Can't see any options like that :\


Ok so, i just got a Creative SoundBlaster Xtreme Music and... same thing. Send an email to Creative :\

when you play stearo mp3's on a surround sound system, they only come out fully through the front speakers

to make sure your speakers are working, download and play a movie that is surround sound, it should sound amazing

tried doing it on dvd's, even the test on the drivers dont work properly, i know mp3's dont have surround =p

try a sound file which is six channel? i m having the same problem btw way, plz tel me if u find  a way to solve it.

Can people stop suggesting using 6-channel sound? I think that the DVD and the driver's tests determine whether 5.1 works or not.

What you really want to check kao is if the soundcard is correctly configured to output on all jacks. I have an Realtek Avance AC'97 built-in 5.1 card myself, and the drivers came with something called AvRack, which allows you to turn the Mic and Line In into speaker outputs for 3.1/5.1. You may need to find if your drivers have a similar utility, and configure from there.

Edit: And yes I know you said Windows is set to 5.1 sound, but that doesn't necessarily mean the soundcard is too

The sound card has 4 jacks, one is for mic, the others are for front, center/sub and rear, all are turned on as far as i can see in every option i've gone through.

never liked multimedia cards

u should have a mixer, so one thing u might do is to check if all the faders are up and unmuted.

u should also set your card to 5.1 mode instead of Stereo. It should be done somewhere in the driver's options.

Also, check Sound & Audio Devices in Control Panel, your settings may be different there. Pro cards usually restrict most of the access to control panel audio settings, so you rarely have problems like this.

well problems and their solutions i've experienced with surround sound in the past

• Control Pannel Sound and Sound Card Mixer Settings not in sync - Various fixes for this, either keep resetting/checking or disable the creative in sync with control pannel (as this caused the problems for me)
  
• SL and SR are swapped with eachother - Simply swap inputs around on the Subwoofer
  
• Windows Sound Mixer Settings are not correct - Go to File ->Properties and ensure that you tick each box click apply/ok, Then return to the mixer, make sure Front, Side, Left, Right, Sub and Center are all at Full volume. (You may not have these options i didn't with my old computer)
  
• Per program settings - Just check to see if there are any settings in the application itself that are incorrect

But i've never experienced sound from only front L and R speakers OH and there are surround sound mp3's but they haven't taken off

Hope you get it working Kao