[Triple6]

Anyone here have a motherboard with a Realtek Codec and has 6 channel audio working?

Oddly the driver from the Microsoft Windows Update installed OK but then when launching the Control Panel it came up with an error that the Realtek driver is not compatible with Vista. The latest 6201 driver from Realtek installs fine but only the 2 front channels work in WMP and Winamp - all 6 work during Vista's speaker test though...

Seems a few people are having this issue with no apparent solution.

 

[Triple6]

Never mind, I found the Speaker Fill option. And Half Life 2 oddly started working by itself. All 6 channels are now working and the quality is noticeable better for audio playback then in XP.

 

[sisalto]

I uninstalled Vista because the sound wasn't working - I think my hardware is Realtek HD Audio Output .. ?

I couldn't connect to the internet whilst on Vista to try and download new drivers but even whilst on XP I found it confusing!! Weird thing is whilst on Vista it said my audio was working when it clearly wasn't

 

[Triple6]

Apparently the Realtek Vista drivers are quite poor at this point. But ATI display drivers appear to be even worse.

 

[crjdriver]

Rob I downloaded the realtek driver from their site and it seems to work fine. I just had to set 5.1 with the Realtek audio mgr.

The ati display driver seems a little strange. It did not ask for a restart so I kind of wondered if it really did install. FWIW I see no difference between the ati driver and the native windows driver; everything works about the same. In device manager it says driver provider is ati with a date of 05 Dec. At least UT2004 plays fine

 

[Triple6]

Not for me, I had it set to 6 channel but only the two front would output using any media player. Now mind you this was playing MP3's which are two channels. In XP I guess the driver automatically fills the other channels but in Vista I had to manually find and enable the fill setting from the Control Panel.

The ATI driver does ask me to restart and works fine with Vista's programs. Doom 3 plays poorly due to lack of OpenGL in the ATI driver. Farcry textures are completely corrupt in many areas but in some areas the lighting appears in HDR which is shouldn't since my cards doesn't(or shouldn't) support it. HL2 plays OK though. TV detection/output is horrible, it wants to enable it and configure it the way it wants rather then the way I want. I gave up on that and used XP to output to the TV. ATI has a lot of work to do.

Oh, and I'm using the December ATI Catalyst driver from the ATI website.

 

[Triple6]

Well I've found a new beta ATI driver and now Farcry plays perfectly. Still no OpenGL support and not sure if TV out is working properly yet.

 

[JeepZJ4.0]

I've noticed that ATI's support and software development are starting to become poor. There has not been a decent Mutlimedia Center since version 8.x. The version 9.x are buggy, slow and corrupted my XP system. Now that I have Vista, I hope that I can find away around using the ATI TV player. I already have a good DVD decoder to replace the DVD player in the MMC. I hope they release the utility to make my Remote Wonder work in Vista.

 

[Its Jack Bauer]

I apologise if this is the wrong place to post this, but these problems are driving me crazy...

I have a four-speaker setup, using a Realtek ALC883 chipset. Whenever I play a sound file or video file that has stereo sound, I don't hear it through the back speakers like I automatically would in Windows XP. I noticed that, in Vista's sound options, there was a "Speaker Fill" option, which I ticked. This then sends sound through the back speakers, but it sounds awful, and I mean awful; as if it's underwater. It takes the speech etc. out of the audio track and just leaves a crackly bassline with the odd digital "squeak".

It's not the sound system at fault because if I simply swap the plugs in the "front speakers" and "back speakers" ports around, then I get the back speakers sounding great and the front speakers sounding awful.

The only reasonable solution I can find is switching on the "room environment", which sends the sound from the front two channels to the back two channels, but with an echo.

Why can't I just set the sound up like it was in XP, with the exact same sound from the front two speakers being sent to the back two speakers?? If I listen to a film at the back of the room, it's like watching something with fingers in your ears!

I've downloaded the latest available drivers from Realtek, uploaded in January 2007 for the High Definition Audio chipsets (available by CLICKING HERE), and the problem is exactly the same.

Please help...

 

[Triple6]

Part of the issue is that with stereo is that its only two channels, so nothing really should be playing out of the rear speakers. That said in XP the rear speakers would output audio with these types of files anyway and for some things it did sound better then in Vista. Then again Realtek has poor driver support and quality, it has never been at the levels of Creative or ADI(who also have numerous driver issues with Vista at the moment). I think all we can do is wait til Vista is released to the public and the manufacturers get a chance to release more drivers, one's that aren't beta.

The speaker fill option isn't bad, works good for music but only when you're not close to the rear speakers - which I'm not.

 

[Its Jack Bauer]

That's my problem, my front speakers are monitor-mounted horrible little things, whereas my back speakers are big, bassy ones connected through a stereo. Most of the time I'm sitting towards the back of the room, so it's much easier for me to have the back speakers connected via the front-speaker socket, but then of course the sound comes out of the wrong places - so if, for example, I'm playing a game and I hear a shot in-front of me, it will actually be coming from behind me.

I was hoping there would just be some kind of "copy sound from front speakers" option somewhere, or at least some kind of (free, seeing as it was fine before!) add-on for Windows Media Player to do it. Until then, I'm having to pull my PC out and rewire the back every time I want to watch a movie.