5.1 Speakers

Rohan

I recently bought a set of 5.1 speakers for quite cheap. For years I've used motherboard audio with a 2.1 speaker set as it has always suited me fine, but when I saw the 5.1 speakers going for cheap, I thought, "What the hell." Now, I came home and I set them up, and plugged them into my motherboard's audio port. This gives me sound from all the speakers, but the pc won't recognise any 5.1 speakers. It lets me control the two front and rear, but not the center speaker. So, I went a-rummaging around and found my old Sound Blaster card in a drawer. It's a 5.1 card (or so said the packaging) and, because I think it's important to show what ports it has, here is a promo shot -



The green port I obviously use for the cable that goes from the control box. The pink is, also obviously, for the microphone. Less obvious to me are what the other ports are for. Black, blue and orange/yellow? I've no idea what to do with them. My speakers came with the following cables that I have not yet used for anything (as I'm unsure how to). Apologies in advance for all the photographs from now on - they were taken with the crap camera on my phone.



A blue cable and an orangey-yellow cable.





These last few cables - I have no idea what they are. Now, you'd think I'd find somewhere to put them, but after connecting up the center speaker, subwoofer and four satellites, the only ports left on the control box are these (apologies again for the bad image) -



The blue port has "Rear L/R" written above it, and the orange has "SUB/CENT". Going from those, presumably I plug the blue cable into the blue port on the sound card and the "Rear/LR" on the control box, and likewise for the orangey/yellow cable. But when I do this, I get only sound from the left and right speakers. Seeing as the main cable from the control box to the sound card is black, I tried plugging it in there, and got the same effect. I tried ticking the "Digital Output Only" in Volume Control, but it remains the same.

I'm quite confused. Can anyone help? And what's with the left-over cables?

robaal

So... is your source actually 5.1? I believe for stereo content to play on all speakers you'd need to force it in the drivers/mixer.

You could also try finding newer drivers for on-board sound, either from the motherboard manufacturer or the audio chipset manufacturer.


IIRC soundblasters often use the same port for different things, so the mic port might actually output sound or something crazy like that.

Rohan

Actually, the more I investigate, the more I suspect that this sound card doesn't, in fact, support 5.1 speakers. Which means buying another one... ah well, I hear those Terratec cards are nice. No more messing around with Creative's bloatware.