W7 and on board sound (realtek)

Dano · 9 Aug 2009 at 16:15

Is it just me or do the current drivers suck badly?

Installed on a Gigabyte GA965P DS3 V1.0 which has an onboard realtek hidef sound solution and the output in comparison to my XP install is just awful.

Main issues are:

5.1 speaker setup, no matter how I configure it I cannot get Winamp to fill all speakers, works flawlessly under XP.

5.1 Speaker room adjustment, utter utter rubbish, causes all sorts of issues with th esound being so delayed it just ends up as a big out of time mess even when all speaker distances are set to the same and stood directly in the center of them. All I want to do is increase the volume of the rear set which again, under XP works flawlessly.

Anybody have any ideas or solutions?

Dano · 2 Oct 2009 at 10:37

james.miller said:
if you want music in 5.1 just use a surround plugin for whatever music player you use.

Winamp already has one but it doesn't work properly in Win7 wheras it works perfectly in XP.

Dano · 2 Oct 2009 at 10:44

james.miller said:
something is wrong then. is the soundcard set to 5.1 and how are the speakers connected?

No, it's all wired correctly, the soundcard is set to 5.1.

Dano · 2 Oct 2009 at 11:01

Yes, no joy.

Dano · 2 Oct 2009 at 11:05

james.miller said:
how are they connected? and have you tried another program such as foobar2000? that comes with a simple stereo > 4 channel plugin which is enough to check rears are working.

The rears work with the latest drivers, now it's just a tinny mushy mess.

also one other thing to check is how windows is actually configured. right click on the speaker in the system tray >> playback devices >> select your speakers or whatever output you are using, click on configure and run through the wizzard

5.1 sound, it all works perfectly from a windows point of view, click each speaker and get a nice loud non-tinny ringing sound through each and every one of them, the issues start when I attempt to use winamp (latest version).

I'm going to install a different player now that I have proper 5.1 with the latest drivers to see if it's a winamp issue, which I suspect it now is.

Dano · 23 Oct 2009 at 10:34

DIABLO said:
To make the stereo sound come out of the rear speakers on the UD5 you have to use a program called Dolby Home Theater, give it a try it might work on other Gigabyte boards. Link

Fails on my motherboard and I still cannot get Winamp to fill 5.1 like it does under XP