5.1 Music in windows 7 & Vista

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bahmirk

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Dec 23, 2008
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I need some help understanding why music in windows xp can play music perfectly fine on all of my speakers, but not on windows 7 or Vista.

I figure its because of the actual music files themselves because i can get full 5.1 sound out of my speakers for anything BUT music. But then i thought it could be a driver issue with the music files or something. I heard that windows 7 unlike vista would support direct sound, so i figured hey i won't have to worry about 5.1 music like i did with vista. I went on to learn with the windows 7 beta that it is the same as vista, music coming out of only 2 speakers. Speaker fill doesn't cut it for me, i would like to know what it is i would have to do to get 5.1 music in windows 7 because its the only thing keeping me from fully supporting it and buying it.

I apologize if I'm not being clear, I'm trying to stay awake. :p
Thank you in advance.
 
Have you altered the speaker output settings in Vista/Windows 7 to reflect that you actually have that many speakers? By default it'll be 2 for stereo, but you need to go in and alter that depending on how many you actually have. As for DirectSound, that's history pre-Vista and it ain't gonna make a comeback, unfortunately.

And no offense, but if that's the only reason you're sticking with XP... well, I ain't believing it for a second... :D
 
Yes, I've set the speaker settings to 5.1 in the control panel, and i do get 5.1 in everything but music (music is very important to me, and I'm considering just getting a 2.1 setup just for windows 7). I hear stuff like the music file isn't encoded in 5.1, well why can it play in xp in 5.1 even if its simulated and windows 7 can't do it. How hard could it be for them to do that? I really do like windows 7 i just want to know why i can't do this one thing. Unfortunately it isn't easy to talk to someone from Microsoft to get the right answers.
 
Well first off you're going to have to stop blaming Windows. This has nothing to do with the operating system. In XP, you had some sort of software setting or equalizer setting (or whatever) that was simulating 5 channels from 2-channel music. Creative Labs calls it CMSS-3D in their control panel. What type of sound card do you have? FWIW I can get simulated 5.1 sound from 2-channel music in Vista and Windows 7 by using the CMSS-3D feature (I have an X-Fi card).
 
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I'm not blaming windows, i just would like to know why and how to fix the problem. I have onboard sound. And it's good to know that a change of sound card could fix the problem. So it would seem that it would be a driver/sound card problem that realtek cannot yet emulate 5.1 from 2 channel audio. Appreciate the help. Any other help/info you guys could share would be nice.
 
bahmirk said:
I figure its because of the actual music files themselves because i can get full 5.1 sound out of my speakers for anything BUT music.
Click to expand...
And you'd be right. Your music files only have two channels. In other words, they're stereo :)
 
I just figured i would post it here because I'm basically comparing the XP and Windows 7 5.1 music and what i have happening differently with the same hardware and latest drivers i can find. So i see it could just be on board sound isn't good enough for what i want to do. I'll have to look around for some good sound cards (probably not now cause it's a new OS) to buy that will have good Windows 7 Support.

My face at the moment. :confused:
 
Check your sound card settings in the appropriate program for Dolby ProLogic (II) or something similar that upmixes 2 channels to 5.1.. or use a program that can do it for you.
 
Might be a good idea to grab a DVD-Audio disc sometime with an actual 5.1 audio soundtrack and give 'er a listen so you know what true 5.1 musical recordings sound like. :D There's a wicked evil cool DVD-Audio disc of Santana's last album "Supernatural" that's most definitely worth a listen...
 
I tried to get my music to play from all my 5.1 speakers on windows 7 too. I have a realtek high definition audio chip and if you have the same one basically theres two things you can do. You can try to find a specifif driver version that i hear can get the music to play from all the speakers. Unfortunately I can't remember the driver version so you'll have to try google. Try something like "realtek high definition audio 5.1 music". I tried this myself but it didn't work though so don't expect much.

The second thing you can do if you use Winamp is to get a plug-in that spreads stereo music to all the speakers. You can find these from Winamp's homepage plug-ins -page. Try searchwords like "5.1" or "surround". I tried like three of them and two of them did the job pretty well.

I think those two are the best ways you can try to get 5.1 music. I guess Creative card users are a bit more lucky since Creative makes the emulation for their cards unlike Realtek.
 
Yeah, unless you're talking about DVD-Audio discs or rips of that, then your music is most definitely not encoded in surround sound and the only reason you were hearing it as such was due to sound-card based emulated effects. Most of the time that doesn't really sound terribly good anyway... If it's stereo to begin with why do you want it in surround? Guess it all depends on the speaker setup too. Anyway, as mentioned, I'm sure you can find some sort of software or driver workaround if your on-board sound won't do that in Windows 7, not sure why you'd wanna though.
 
Some information i should have posted earlier: Motherboard X58 Platinum, on-board sound ALC888.
I'll post if i find out a solution.
 
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