Surround sound vanished

[Captain]

I've just noticed that videos on sites such asYoutube, Gametrailers, Break, and Liveleak have suddenly gone from surround sound to stereo. No more sound coming from the rear and center speakers.

Stage6 Divx videos are working fine with surround. Winamp and games are working perfectly. Windows is setup for 5.1 channel sound.

What gives? I tried reinstalling the Flash player addon but to no avail. I'm using Firefox but IE7 is having the same problem.

[Foo]

Any 2-channel source needs to be 'upmixed' somewhere along the line. If your sound system has an option for 'pro logic', turn it on, as this upmixes 2-channel to all speakers.

Likewise if there's anything similar on the windows settings. On newer creative cards I think you have to have CMSS-3D enabled to get upmixed stereo...

[Captain]

Remember I'm using the on-board Realtek HD Audio on my 680i SLI LT =o

:baffled:

[Captain]

This problem isn't just limited to browsers. Here's the full scoop before I pass out on the keyboard. Been tackling this all night but to no avail.

Basically, surround sound no longer works in XP. If I go to the audio settings in the control panel and play a sample audio clip such as "exit windows", it plays only through 2 speakers. I think the reason Stage6 Divx still has full surround is because of its built-in Divx player that uses its own codec and tech.

So far, I have tried the following:

-Updated the Realtek audio drivers to the latest; no change
-Put in my Soundblaster Live! 24-bit sound card to test it out. I enabled CMSS-3D and the surround sound was working perfectly in Windows and internet videos.
-Moving right along, I got rid of the Creative card and uninstalled every trace of Realtek and Creative with Driver Cleaner Pro.
-Reinstalled Realtek drivers from BFG 680i mobo CD; no change

So basically, there is something that has all of a sudden gone missing here. Something that forces full surround sound upmixing. "Pro logic" as you already said or in Creative's case, CMSS-3D.

Just to wrap up, motherboard is a BFG 680i LT SLI with the latest BIOS (P05). Speaker system is the Logitech X-530 5.1.

Winamp and WMP and games are all working perfectly with full surround.

I have no damn clue what to do next.

Here's a few screenies:

[Captain]

Forget it. I'm back to using my Soundblaster and the sound is excellent. CMSS 3D makes sure everything is 5.1.

Guess I put too much faith in on-board. My onboard audio experience goes 0 for 2 \o/

[Foo]

Ey sorry but, I didn't get chance to look into this until today.

The best I've been able to find is a similar Reaktek chipset to mess with but the menus look different, so I'm kinda stuck.

If you're back to a PCI card i guess it's moot though... I'm running onboard there's been very few onboard chips that sound better than a discrete card.

[SoM]

i have the same realtek hd audio as you but i'm with 2.1 only problem is my front case audio port dont work, and yes its connected properly. USB's work

[Kills On Site]

I have two mobos with the Realtek HD Audio. One has died, need to RMA that mobo. The other, the front audio port, which I only really plug headphones into, has a lot of white noise, so did the other computer. Same mobo and case on both computers. Not sure I'm extremely impressed with Realtek HD Audio.

[Captain]

Everything's so much better with this Soundblaster. Seems on-board is still weak compared to a good PCI card.

[MaCaBr3]

Everything's so much better with this Soundblaster. Seems on-board is still weak compared to a good PCI card.

Er yeah duh. Also Realtek is kinda crap.

[SoM]

soundstorm from nvidia was much better tho, too bad they killed it

[Foo]

The onboard x-fi on my mobo is pretty good, but creative's software is complete shit.

Might look into a non-creative solution soon.