5.1 Speakers? And expanding to rear speakers?

Hi,
Yes, the 6-speaker mode means 5.1. To get audio from your rear channels while playing stereo music, enable Dolby Pro Logic IIx or DTS Neo PC. These technologies convert stereo music to 5.1 or 7.1 output.

I have tried enabling Dolby Pro Logic IIx as well as DTS Neo PC. They do not output to all speakers - only the front 3.

Are you plugged into the side surround jack, or the back surround one? You'll want to be using the side surround jack if the card is set to 5.1 output.

I have my speakers in the color-coded spots.

Green (front) in Green

Black (rear) in Black

Orange (Center/Sub) in Orange (Center/Sub)

I tried moving the rear (black) connector to the other Orange connector (back surround) and the rear speakers no longer worked at all.

It seems that everything is where it's supposed to be, as labeled in the documentation for the card:

Front > Front Out / Headphone

Rear > Side Surround Out

Center/Sub > Center / Subwoofer

The rear speakers still do not output sound when playing MP3's. I tried the DTS Neo, the Dolby, the virtual surround - nothing.

Are you getting audio from these speakers when you run the speaker test sounds? Also, what happens when you use Pro Logic IIx's front/back fade control and set it all the way to the back?

I do get audio when I run the speaker test sounds in windows. I do not see a way to do this in the control panel for the sound card.

When I use the fade controls for the Pro Logic, nothing happens. The sound doesn't change at all - it's still just coming from the front 3 speakers.

Are you on XP or Vista? If it's the latter, you might need to also set Vista's output mode to 5.1 (if it's not already) for that mode to work correctly.

I'm on Vista.

I thought I had set the speakers to 5.1 in the control panel, but they were set to stereo. I set them to 5.1, but now when opening the Oxygen HD control panel, there is no option for Pro Logic or DTS any longer.

System Input is set to 6CH now, which isn't the input for MP3's. If I change it to 2CH, it switches the speaker configuration in the sound control panel back to stereo, but then the DTS/Pro Logic modes come back - but they still do not work.

Strange- what you want is System Input is to be set to 2CH, and output set to 6CH. I'm not sure why the Vista audio output setting is locking itself to the Inferno's System Input setting. Have you looked for a different audio output setting in the Vista Sound control panel?

Yeah...I have tried all combinations of everything that I can think of and nothing has worked.

Which audio program(s) are you using for these tests?

The only thing I care about expanding to 5.1 are MP3's and I just use windows media player for that.

I recommend trying a different program, just to see if there is a setting in WMP that could be causing the problem. I'd recommend a basic audio player that doesn't have advanced audio output settings, like iTunes or RealPlayer.

I tried Media Player Classic and it is doing the same thing.

I think at this point we should try a different driver. I am assuming that you're using the latest Vista driver from the website. If so, you might want to try the original driver (on the CD), as it has most of its functionality on Vista.

There's also an older Vista driver that you can try

That link says page not found.

Are there x64 drivers on the original CD?

Sorry, I fixed the link and it works now. I don't think the XP driver on the CD will work in x64, but I've been wrong before.

Nothing is working.

I just now noticed that my center channel isn't outputting any sound either when I was turning up the volume on it. This is really frustrating. The crappy onboard sound worked better than this.

Do you have any idea when a proper driver will be released? The "new" one isn't all that new anymore.

There is something strange going on here, and I'm not sure what the problem is. If you haven't tried it yet, you might try uninstalling the driver, disabling UAC, and re-installing it. We've found with another product that disabling UAC can clear up some seemingly mysterious problems- perhaps it will help in this case.

UAC was the first thing I disabled after installing Vista.

I've tried reinstalling drivers, nothing I've tried works.

I am running out of ideas... try a registry cleaner (CCleaner is both good and free). This is a pretty mysterious problem, unfortunately.

I am also having all of these problems and I have a 5.1 speaker configuration. Like every single problem that was mentioned here. I've also done pretty much everything that was suggested here and I've had the same results... except that if I set my system input to 2CH instead of 6CH my sound completely dies until I switch it back. Also, in games even though I set my configuration to 5.1 I'm still only getting sound from the front left and right speakers (my center speaker doesn't emit sound unlike what the other guy was saying). The only time I got sound to come from all of them was when I did a surround sound test in Windows Media Center.

I didn't have any of these problems on my last PC which was using Windows XP 32-bit. Right now I'm using Vista x64 with the Inferno Vista 64-bit drivers. It really does seem like just a problem with the beta Vista drivers. I hope there will be a solution/fix soon. It's sad having three speakers sitting on the desk doing absolutely nothing... :/

Thanks for helping out.

It's very confusing, especially since you get all sound channels active in Windows Media Center. To me, this should mean that the sound card is fully operational, and the problem is somewhere on the Windows Audio side. Do you have any other multichannel audio devices on this PC, and if so do they work correctly under Vista?

The only other audio device I have are my headphones, which of course have 2 channels. They work fine with Vista, but then again they're 2 channel and that's what my speakers are acting like.

Something I just realized yesterday... in Ventrilo, if I check direct sound for the output, all of the sound coming from other people's microphones comes out of my center speaker only. Everything else comes out of the left and right speakers like it usually does.

If you're familiar with the application, here's a screenshot of the settings I used when the sound was coming out of the center speaker:

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/5443/ventif2.png

Thanks again for helping.

I'm not very familiar with Ventrilo; with the box unchecked, do the mic signals come out of the L/R channels?

What other options are available in the Hardware Mixer section?

Yes. When it's unchecked I get the mic signals from the front L/R speakers again, and nothing from the center.

Here's a screenshot of what's in the mixer drop-down menu:

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/1788/mixerhe4.png

Was wondering if anyone found a resolve to this issue?

My 5.1 system only works when the input is set to 2chan which seems extremely odd because I'm playing AC3, not something that's only 2 channels.

When I set the input to any other type of input such as 4,6,8.. it only produces sound out of the front L & R only. This looks like a bug in the driver which I'm sure alot of people are very well aware of.

I was wondering if anyone is actually going to fix this issue since drivers for this piece of hardware seem to be dealt with at a low priority? I'm currently using the 08/30/07 driver for Vista.

You might wanna try Auzentech's driver for the X-Meridian (same chip). It works for me, and it's the exact same version, with just a bit different UI. Works like a charm with the Inferno.

Kool ill use that. Thank you very much

Just out of curiosity, is sondigo not going to support their product if another product using the same chip has already been perfected?

Actually I've used the driver from Azuntech and it nearly the exact same thing as the current beta. It also doesn't work properly while in 6chan or any other besides 2chan.

So who is actually supposed to support the driver development if sondigo and Azuntech aren't the developers of this Oxygen chip? Is it Oxygen themselves? If that's the case then why the long delay? Seems odd

I think your problem is other than what the OP posted. I was referring to his and others' problem of DPLIIx not working. I don't have the problem you have, and it seems your registry might be corrupted. Have you tried cleaning your registry before reinstalling the driver?

Thanks guys, using that Auzentech driver immediately fixed it! I get sound from all speakers now.

Hmm, I should mention though that it has a weird echo effect when it duplicates stereo to the rear speakers. Music sounds a lot better with 2 speaker output. In Windows XP I didn't get any weird echo effect. Tried tweaking the DSP modes but they all gave weird effects. The subwoofer also gets a lot less sound when I switch to 6 channels. I have yet to try a game though. This is only with music so far.

Going to try an Asus Xonar PCIe board. Anything has to be better than this.

Drivers STILL have not been updated or fixed. Worthless support. I'd recommend nobody buy this product at all, or any variation of the same.

Such a simple function yet apparently it's too difficult for anyone to fix.

Nevermind my last post.Right click on the Vista volume control-panel and select playback devices.Click on the Cmedia HD Audio Device and select properties,then click on the advanced tab.Make sure that you set the default Format to 24bit 48000Hz. 96000 & 192000 do not work with Neo DTS or PLIIx.

BTW,the ASUS cards are just modified Cmedia 8788 HD's.I can even install there drivers by just changing the hardware I'd's in the Inf.

"How to Install Cmedia drivers In Vista"
1. Disable UAC "User Account Control" and then reboot.
2. Extract the drivers with winzip or winrar to a folder and then open it,rightclick on the setup.exe file and in the drop-down box select "Run as Administrator" drivers will install and you will be asked to reboot,select yes and reboot.

3. After Vista reboots do the following...Right click on the Vista volume control-panel in the task bar and select playback devices.Click on the Cmedia HD Audio Device and select properties,then click on the advanced tab.Set the default Format to 24bit 48000Hz.If its set to 16bit or 24bit with a sample rate of 96000/192000 the DTS Neo and PLIIx DSP's lose functionality,IE..don't work.

Note:I use the HT Omega drivers "claro-full-0215.zip" http://www.htomega.com/downloads.html
Extract with winzip & open the claro-full-0215 folder.In the vista folder there is an ini file "CmiOemConfig.ini" delete it so your card isn't recognized as an HT Omega then do all of the above to install.