7.1 surround sound

[eggie]

Right then,

I need peoples help here. A while ago I got myself a new sound card so I wandered off into town and came back with a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy. Brilliant I thought, nicer sounding audio than on board and when I get some money together I can get 7.1 surround sound and all will be well. Well I've got some surround sound speakers now (Creative T7900) and very nice they are, well the 3 I can get working are anyway.

I've installed all of the stuff that came with the sound card and when I go to test the speakers I get a signal coming out off all of them but when listening to music, watching films etc. I'm only getting 2.1. This leads me to my question.

How do I fix it???

Any help is muchly appreciated.

Cheers

Dave.

[Maleko]

First off, wat DVD software are you using?

Most the time its to do with configuring the software with the speakers.

I hav the Audigy 2 Platinum ex, set up as 6.1 in the Creative console, then set to 6.1 in the Player software, I use Power DVD 7.

[ripken204]

u have creative, thats why. you need a source that is 7.1 to get 7.1 output. unless u have some program to change it into 7.1

[Maleko]

The Creative Audigy will have 5.1 higher models have 6.1/7.1, on the Speakers Sub Woofer, there will be an upmix switch on the back; this will upmix 5.1 to 7.1.

Again, if your only experiencing 2.1 in DVD playback, nearly always is a software configuration.

In power DVD, for example, you select what speakers you have in the audio settings.

Edited December 14, 2006 by Maleko

[eggie]

No sorry it is a 7.1 sound card. Should have been clearer with the first post

[Maleko]

So what dvd software u using?

[eggie]

I'm using Power DVD 6 for DVD's.

Is there any way of getting it to work on things like Winamp though it'd be kinda cool to be able to watch avi's and listen to music with it coming out of all of them?

Cheers

[clavicle]

Firstly almost all audio sources like mp3 etc are encoded 2.1, only wma gets better in this. So your output is likely to be as set out by creative a mix of 5 speakers plus little audible vol on side l/r and centre spk. This one gets after setting the speaker settings from the creative audio control panel, with setting of spks as 7.1 and cms 1 or cms 2 selected.

I have audigy 2zs platinum and t7900 speakers and limited 7.1 support.

But I found a better solution, there is a new program released by SRS called Sandbox Audio, it act as new software audio driver and gives far much better sound from front centre and side speakers and also rear ones. This is the only viable solution right now.

I have tried all possible solutions but only SRS comes quite near it. You have to shell out 20USD though.

http://www.srs-store.com/store-plugins/mall/sas-plugin.asp

It is only a 14 day trial, try if it suits you.

You can try this program for all the audio applications like wmp, winamp, etc.

Edited December 16, 2006 by clavicle

[DKI]

As clavicle said Music is encoded in 2 channel so it would only play through two channels. Creative have a feature called CMSS-3D that basicly upmixes 2 channel audio on the fly and plays it through all the speakers.

For dvd movies you need to find out if your version of powerdvd 6 will allow you to set more then 2 speakers for surround sound playback as others have said.

There are different versions (e.g. OEM, Retail Standard and Deluxe Editions) and according to the website powerdvd 6 deluxe edition would allow 7.1 speaker setup and standard 5.1 and OEM is down to the manufcture who offers it but usually i never seen any offer more then 2 channels.

Me I have powerdvd 7 set to SPDIF out in the speaker settings and in the creative xfi audio console i have my speakers set to 7.1 (T7900) and the creative decoder tab settings to use built in decoder for Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES decoding (applys to audigy 2 value and above) so the card drivers can do the decoding.

Edited December 16, 2006 by DKI

[eggie]

Thanks DKI

I found the option that needed to be clicked and I now have lots of sound!

Thanks a lot

Dave

[clavicle]

Me I have powerdvd 7 set to SPDIF out in the speaker settings and in the creative xfi audio console i have my speakers set to 7.1 (T7900) and the creative decoder tab settings to use built in decoder for Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES decoding (applys to audigy 2 value and above) so the card drivers can do the decoding.

I have got all the options you mentioned, but the fact remains that the central speaker sends out muffled sounds, faint sound comes from side spks and if I use THX console to individually tweak volumes, I find all speakers especially s/woofer going haywire, giving out extremely ugly loud sound and loudness goes off when I turn down the treble (? strange!).

I found sandbox gives a far better option of using these all speakers very effectively, even you get to see the output in five channels how it is mixed. Atleast I haven't found a solution better than this of the innumerable things that I have been trying for the past one and half year.

[DKI]

I have got all the options you mentioned, but the fact remains that the central speaker sends out muffled sounds, faint sound comes from side spks and if I use THX console to individually tweak volumes, I find all speakers especially s/woofer going haywire, giving out extremely ugly loud sound and loudness goes off when I turn down the treble (? strange!).

I found sandbox gives a far better option of using these all speakers very effectively, even you get to see the output in five channels how it is mixed. Atleast I haven't found a solution better than this of the innumerable things that I have been trying for the past one and half year.

Odd With the soundblaster audigy 2zs or XFI i never had any issues like you said, maybe just luck. The only time i have poor sound output is if the sound was done poorly on a dvd (which is very very few dvd), but the vast majority of dvds i got have had good clear sound from all speakers and the centre speaker has always outputted clearly.

[clavicle]

DVDs are always going to give you better sound. But it is the mp3 stuff which is going to give you creeps.

I have seen so many posts in various forums highlighting this problem.

But the better encoding options of mp3s will certainly help to get better sounds.