I have a 5.1 Surround Audio Card and I can't hear sound from 4 speakers

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I have a 5.1 Surround Audio Card and I can't hear sound from 4 speakers

I have a 5.1 Creative Soundblaster External that works very nice under OSX. I have configured the card with Audio Midi Setup utility to 6 speakers. Tested them work just fine. I can have 5.1 sound in HD trailers in QuickTime.

However, I have stereo in Apple DVD player and in iTunes I can't hear sound from the rear speakers.

Anyone knows how to make these 2 applications work properly?

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Apr 12, 2006 10:35 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 13, 2006 7:57 AM in response to Snolly

I have much the same setup.

my 5.1 sound files play though all 6 speakers. when i play ordinary stereo it only plays through 4 i think. Which sounds like what you get as well.

Isnt that what you'd expect ?

does your system have a stereo to surround option ? perhaps called CMSS ?

Creative MultiSpeaker Surround (CMSS) is part of the EAX technology supported by the Sound Blaster audio cards such as Sound Blaster Live!, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 series, Sound Blaster Audigy series, and Sound Blaster Audigy 2 or later series. It can also be found as a CMSS button on some multichannel speaker systems such as the Creative Inspire T7700, T6600/T6700, Creative Inspire 5.1 or Digital 5700, and on the external Digital I/O modules shipped with Sound Blaster Audigy 2 or Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.
It can upmix stereo sources such as MP3, WMA, or Wav, to 4.1/5.1/6.1/7.1 channels depending on your speaker setup and sound card model.

2.5 G5, 400 G4, 1.2 iBookG4, iMac, Airport, MP2k Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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Answer 2

Snolly Author

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Apr 15, 2006 12:09 PM in response to Guy Facius

I have an exterlan soundblaster Live.

The issue is that I get STEREO and not surround sound in iTunes, ie the rear speakers don't play any sound.

Second Issue is that Apple DVD Player plays stereo as well.

The only application that gives me more than stereo sound is QuickTime (when playing files that have multichannel sound).

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