No 5.1 audio in 5.1 mode.

Let me start by offering 100bucks to the person that brings me Bill G.'s head.


I got some Logitech G51 speakers, set them up, went into the "Sounds" thing in my Control Panel (the connections are color coded, so I dont think I messed that up ) but....there is no true 5.1.

It appears that my front left and front right speakers emmit the same damn signal. Same for the right side. I got the newest SoundMax drivers for my StrikerExtreme installed.

 

Vista or XP?
Vista IIRC has issues with 5.1 in certain environments or applications however I've not looked into it much myself.

 

Vista Ultimate edition.

So, sofar I have learnt that NOTHING ****ing works in Windows Vista.
SLI? Doesnt work well.
5.1 sound? Doesnt work well.
Stability? Erm...what?

 

Make sure speaker fill is turned on for sources that aren't 5.1. I was frustrated because my Logitech Z5500's weren't playing my music in 5.1 after I installed Vista, but I found out that in the sound manager speaker fill wasn't on, so it was playing the music in its native 2.0.

 

Where do I find that option?

In Crysis, I am getting 2.1 sound in a 4.1 setup (center speaker quiet, left F&R emmit same sounds, right F&R emmit same sounds)
Control --> Sounds (nothing works here to make it true 5.1)

 

Are you using analog or digital connection to the spekers?
I have some programs running in multi speaker and others not, I use a digital connection to my set of speakers, as I found that more applications worked in multi channel than when it was configured using analog 3.5mm audio jacks

Some applications will work with 5.1 and others not in vista due to the audio engine (explained in some detail) having been changed, however other audio paths such as ASIO and OpenAL bypass the vista audio path so remain uneffected by the change.

I recommend that you grab the "blackhawk" sound max vista drivers for your board, it had added support for multi speaker, hardware acceleration, among some other that I forget.


With blackhawk you can enable multi speaker / upmix the audio.
OFF


ON

 

I'm using Gigabyte onboard sound, so it'll probably be slightly different for me, but I just click the icon for Gigabyte's sound manager in the system tray and then check the box for speaker fill.

 

Control Panel -> Sound -> Playback -> [Properties] -> Enhancements -> [X] Speaker Fill

Basically.

 

I dont beleive the soundmax cards have that option sadly
Least mine does not

 

Yeah the enhancements are driver dependent. Speaking of which, it's worth getting the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website. My onboard (Karajan on a DFI lanParty) was funky until I worked out I needed to download Vista drivers from the Realtek website. That sorted it (and as this was all the way back in March, I was quite impressed).

I'm now successfully rocking 7.1