7.1 audio in Vista 64?

N

newster

Gawd
Joined
Aug 22, 2004
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I have a 7.1 audio system in my room (Pioneer receiver) and it used to work great with my computer (both gaming and movie watching through SPDIF) when I had Windows XP. Since I upgraded to Vista 64, my SB Audigy 2 NX has stopped playing 5.1 audio in games and movies, and the onboard (Abit P35) has done the same as well.

My question is: am I just setting it wrong, or is the hardware I have incapable of giving me 7.1 audio while playing games? What am I doing wrong, what do I need, or what am I missing? Help me out, my poor side and rear speakers are getting rusty!
 
It's because Vista doesn't do hardware acceleration of sound anymore, it is all done in software. Now that shouldn't be a problem, since software supports multi-channels and indeed games like World of Warcraft and source engine games work fine. However, for whatever reason, a lot of games will only do surround if they detect hardware acceleration. I don't know why, but that's how it is. So many are 2-channel only in Vista.

The only fix for this is ALchemy from Creative. It's free if you have an X-Fi, costs $10 for Audigy users. Basically it takes directsound calls can converts it to OpenAL which is still hardware accelerated.

That is, as far as I know, the only way to get surround in old games. Newer titles, thankfully, tend not to be so stupid and work just fine in software mode.
 
Thanks for the reply. Ok, so now my question is how come I can't get a Dolby Digital signal out of my Audigy or onboard sound through SPDIF when watching a DVD and I only play the newer games such as COD4 and I still only get 2 channel sound?
 
hmm, well I have an SB audigy, and I'm getting 7.1 through my Creative Inspire 7800 7.1 speakers. All working fine with full 7.1 surround using Vista x64.
 
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