TR Forums

Hi everyone.

I've been lurking here for a while collecting all the parts for my first try at a new build. Got the last stuff in today and left work early to see if it all came together. Everything worked at first except the 7.1 sound. Only had 2 speaker sound. Messed around with settings and now I don't have ANY sound. System is the Christmas 08 build and follows:

Processer - I7 965 Extreme
MB - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Memory - Corsair 6GB DDR3 1600
GPU - (2) Zotac GeForce 260 GTX
HD - (2) Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
SSD - Intel X25M 80GB
DVD -LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray combo
Audio- Asus Xonar DX
TV Tuner - AVerMedia AVerTV Combo PCIe
Speakers - Logitech G51

Running Windows Vista Ultimate 64

I have the speaker input plugged into the audio card outputs.

I never expected everything to work on the first try, but didn't really expect problems with the sound. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

pdh

I've never used an add-on sound card, so don't take these questions too seriously. Is the motherobard's on-board sound working? Is there a setting to change from the on-board sound to the sound-card? Any chance some setting on the media card is interfering? Do you remember what settings were changed when it went from 2 working speakers to 0 working speakers?

Did you disable the onboard audio in the BIOS?

How much did you spend on that PC?

You probably didn't have a problem in the first place. If you were listening to music, YouTube videos, etc, then you're only going to get L+R sound because that's all that exists in the first place. The source material has to be 4/5.1/7.1 in the first place.

As for music, there are many plugins for Winamp/Foobar/etc for copying music from front speakers to rear/etc. For videos, ffdshow has some extra settings for that as well.

I do have audio on the motherboard and finally figured out how to get that up last night.

I didn't change anything in BIOS to disable the onboard audio. I'll take a look at that tonight. I'm very nervous in BIOS.

I did check to make sure that I was using DTS media to check the system using a DVD. It is working fine on the motherboard audio.

As you can probably tell, I'm completely newbie with this stuff. Got really tired of buying games I can't play on proprietary systems that are only a couple of years old.

BTW, the price wasn't as much as the XMas build indicated. Not counting the monitor and peripherals, it came in around $3200. That 30" Dell monitor was worth every penny though! I was up all night with Oblivion.

Thanks for the advice and comments.

pdh

Are you sure you didn't switch the settings that control whether it's the analog or digital output that's being used?

I know with the M-Audio software I could select different speakers setups. Only one of which is labeled "Digital". All the other settings were different analog settings.

If you have the SPDIF Out box checked, then you will get no sound at all. Your selections should be:

Audio Channel: 6 channels

Sample rate: doesn't matter

Analog out: 5.1 speakers

SPDIF Out: NOT checked

Virtual speaker and Pro Logic IIx are a preference thing, and you will just have to play with those to see if they suit your tastes.

Also make sure Hi-Fi mode is not on... it may force stereo. I don't remember, because I'm using the standard C-Media interface instead of ASUS' proprietary stuff. So, I don't have Hi-Fi mode or SVN.

Putting the card in 4, 5.1, 7.1, etc, will send music to all the speakers. I'm listening to it that way now. You may prefer 2- or 4- channel sound for music though. It depends on the quality of your center, spacing of the speakers, etc. Try different modes and decide what suits you best. I find 4-channel mode best for my music needs.