5.1 Sound Problem with Vista

Stephen P

I have a Creative Audigy 2 Platinum with 5.1 speakers. I upgraded to Vista Home Premium 32-bit from XP Home. The problem is I've no sound coming from the back 2 speakers (RL & RR), the other speakers are fine. I'm messed around with settings and downloaded the latest Vista drivers for the Sound Card and I still can't get the back 2 speakers to work. I've also made sure that the settings in Winamp & WMP were set to 5.1 support.

Anyone got any ideas as to what is happening? And how I can fix it?

Cheers!

mathias

Soundwise Ive got the exact same setup as you , assuming you definitely have the latest drivers , ( because 5.1 didnt work in any earlier version ! ) then go to the creative audio console , select speakers , and select 5.1. This is the only way of setting them that work. Your other programs should then work fine.

If it still wont work , did you uninstall all the previous creative software before you installed the latest drivers , thats a must as installing over the previous software never works properly.

Stephen P

mathias wrote:

Soundwise Ive got the exact same setup as you , assuming you definitely have the latest drivers , ( because 5.1 didnt work in any earlier version ! ) then go to the creative audio console , select speakers , and select 5.1. This is the only way of setting them that work. Your other programs should then work fine.

If it still wont work , did you uninstall all the previous creative software before you installed the latest drivers , thats a must as installing over the previous software never works properly.

I uninstalled all the drivers and creative software and started from scratch. In the drop down box for the speakers in the audio console there's nothing at all in there. I have sound but not in the rear speakers

mathias

Take a look at the screen shots below , do they match yours ?
Thats the setup I have , from the drop down box on the console I can select anything from 2.1 up to 5.1 , the only other thing I can think of is that you may have spdif selected , if so then you cant select a speaker config as that would be automatically determined by the bitstream on your external decoder ( the only reason you would select spdif out is if you had an external decoder ! )

Stephen P

mathias wrote:

Take a look at the screen shots below , do they match yours ?
Thats the setup I have , from the drop down box on the console I can select anything from 2.1 up to 5.1 , the only other thing I can think of is that you may have spdif selected , if so then you cant select a speaker config as that would be automatically determined by the bitstream on your external decoder ( the only reason you would select spdif out is if you had an external decoder ! )

I'm not a home at the moment so I can't do a screen shot of what my setup is like, but I do know that the drop box is blank. Under sound settings I THINK?? spdif is selected as being on, I'll check that out later and turn if off or disable it. I have a front card aswell like this one. Should spdif still be disabled?

mathias

Spdif has two options in the console , the options are , " Default " or "bypass" , bypass means passthrough , thats what everyone else calls it.

The bypass option skips the soundcard electronics and sends the digital feed to an external decoder , ( like a surround amp etc . ) Some Creative speakers come with this , some dont .

If your speakers are plugger straight to the sound card , then you should have it in default , on the other hand if you have an external decoder , you may have it in passthrough ,

In passthrough , the decoder will decide on the content , what gets activated , so a stereo stream will just use two speakers ( and sub )unless you tell it to do otherwise ( pro logic II or something ) while a movie will use all the speakers.

Oh and by the way , the creative audio console thats in the screenshot is the only control under Vista that works with the soundcard , and it should look the same as whats posted. Im using the latest drivers too so it should be exactly the same as above. If not , you are either using the wrong tool or there is something wrong with the installation. The console should be under creative in the programs menu.

Stephen P

mathias wrote:

Spdif has two options in the console , the options are , " Default " or "bypass" , bypass means passthrough , thats what everyone else calls it.

The bypass option skips the soundcard electronics and sends the digital feed to an external decoder , ( like a surround amp etc . ) Some Creative speakers come with this , some dont .

If your speakers are plugger straight to the sound card , then you should have it in default , on the other hand if you have an external decoder , you may have it in passthrough ,

In passthrough , the decoder will decide on the content , what gets activated , so a stereo stream will just use two speakers ( and sub )unless you tell it to do otherwise ( pro logic II or something ) while a movie will use all the speakers.

Oh and by the way , the creative audio console thats in the screenshot is the only control under Vista that works with the soundcard , and it should look the same as whats posted. Im using the latest drivers too so it should be exactly the same as above. If not , you are either using the wrong tool or there is something wrong with the installation. The console should be under creative in the programs menu.

Another thing aswell, I forgot to mention which is important, whenever I got into the Creative Audio Console Vista kicked me out of it and closed the program and I can't get back into without rebooting the system.

mathias

Definitely sounds like an installation problem so , first however , turn off UAC ( thats user access control ) and try to change the settings , this might help ,

Otherwise , go to the programs menu in control panel , and remove every piece of Creative software , then try and install again , this time with UAC turned off , and any antivirus software turned off as well.

See what happens then.

Stephen P

mathias wrote:

Definitely sounds like an installation problem so , first however , turn off UAC ( thats user access control ) and try to change the settings , this might help ,

Otherwise , go to the programs menu in control panel , and remove every piece of Creative software , then try and install again , this time with UAC turned off , and any antivirus software turned off as well.

See what happens then.

Thanks mathias for your help, I'll try that later and see what happens.

Stephen P

Ok, I disabled the UAC this evening and had another look at the audio console but still no luck. I've attached pics of the settings in audio console and also the sound settings in control panel

8T8

Was this a clean install or an upgrade over an existing XP installation ?

Dont have the same hardware myself so cannot really offer any advice but there are some tips in the Creative forum about multi-channel audio under Vista.

Something definitely looks wrong in the Creative speaker console anyway. There seems to be recommendation that you untick sync with the windows control panel in the Creative console.

Stephen P

8T8 wrote:

Was this a clean install or an upgrade over an existing XP installation ?

Dont have the same hardware myself so cannot really offer any advice but there are some tips in the Creative forum about multi-channel audio under Vista.

Something definitely looks wrong in the Creative speaker console anyway. There seems to be recommendation that you untick sync with the windows control panel in the Creative console.

I went through the various steps in the links above and it didn't work so I went back a few steps and just installed the kx Manager on its own and I have full 5.1 surround sound so I'll stick with that till perhaps Creative have a fix for Vista