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5.1 speakers & SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
Rohan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I recently picked up a set of 5.1 analogue speakers on the cheap, and thought that it might be time I dug out the old SB card I had lying around for the last few years. I bought it when I built my first pc but discarded it upon first installing XP to balk at the terrible drivers. Since then I've been using nothing but motherboard sound, and that's always been fine with me. Now, however, when I bought the speakers, I thought that using a true 5.1 card might benefit me.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I ran into trouble setting the speakers up, and that the card I had didn't actually support 5.1 speakers (model SBCT4780) and went back to the onboard sound chip, which actually does support 5.1, and very nicely, too. However, it turned out that I'd plucked the wrong card from my collection of pc hardware lying around the room - I didn't even know I'd had two sound cards, never mind two Live!'s... no idea where the second one came from. I found the original one two days ago, and I recognised it immediately as the original card I bought. I decided, what the heck, I'd give it a try.
So now, here I am. I've installed the card and set up the speakers correctly, and everything should be hunky dory. But it isn't. Everything is as it was on my onboard chip (Realtek AC'97), but on the speaker setup of the program that came with it, it had the option of reversing the centre/subwoofer channel. Otherwise, it would treat the subwoofer as the centre speaker, and ignore the real speaker altogether. This is what the SBLive! is doing right now, and I cannot see any option to reverse the channels... I don't suppose anyone can help?
Anyway, to make a long story short, I ran into trouble setting the speakers up, and that the card I had didn't actually support 5.1 speakers (model SBCT4780) and went back to the onboard sound chip, which actually does support 5.1, and very nicely, too. However, it turned out that I'd plucked the wrong card from my collection of pc hardware lying around the room - I didn't even know I'd had two sound cards, never mind two Live!'s... no idea where the second one came from. I found the original one two days ago, and I recognised it immediately as the original card I bought. I decided, what the heck, I'd give it a try.
So now, here I am. I've installed the card and set up the speakers correctly, and everything should be hunky dory. But it isn't. Everything is as it was on my onboard chip (Realtek AC'97), but on the speaker setup of the program that came with it, it had the option of reversing the centre/subwoofer channel. Otherwise, it would treat the subwoofer as the centre speaker, and ignore the real speaker altogether. This is what the SBLive! is doing right now, and I cannot see any option to reverse the channels... I don't suppose anyone can help?
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Rohan on
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Does the SBLive actually sound any better than the onboard chip? Because if it doesn't, why bother? Just run from onboard.
It does seem to have a deeper, meatier sound. I'm not too bothered, though - if this causes too much trouble, I'll just go back to onboard.
There are three cables running from the control box to the sound card - front speakers, right speakers, and lastly, one single cable for the subwoofer and centre speaker. Which is why I need to be able to reverse the channels through software.
Edit - I'm curious about PowerDVD. It lists only either a 2 speaker setup, or S/PDIF. Seeing as I have analogue speakers, I obviously can't use S/PDIF. So how can I enable 5.1 sound for my DVD's?
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Fixed.
Fuck PowerDVD, it's a piece of shit anyway.
I dunno, it came with a DVD drive a year or two back, and I've always used it because I've only ever had a 2.1 speaker setup. I always assumed it was the full version.
Meh, it's always worked for me, and VLC just seemed to be overly complex the last time I looked at it. But that was a few years ago now, so maybe I should give it another try.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten