Vista - 5.1 speakers not working on vista =[

okay, i noe this question prob pisses everyone off the most, buttt i have a common problem of my 5.1 logitech speakers not working on vista, like most ppl, wen i test them on realtek hd, they all seem to work fine, but wen i go to play music , movies ect.. they seem not to work at all, i can onli get 2.1 spekers working not the the full 5.1, ive done everything, filling in speaker fill ect..and have also been on a million forums to find a soultion.. but there is too much jargon that i dont undertsand. can some1 simplfy a solutuion for me, help will be greatly appreictaed, ive been trying to find help for the past 6 months =[[[
p.s wen i had windows xp they seem to work all fine

I assume you have you speakers hooked up via 3x2chan jacks right?
(front R/L, rear R/L and center/sub; green, black/grey and orange)

Right click sound icon, open 'playback devices'
select 'speakers' and click on 'configure'
select '5.1 surround' from list and click on next
check full-range Front/back if applicable (consult speaker specs to find out if your sattelites are full-range) and click on next
click on finish and close menus still open

This ensures windows has your speakers set up properly.

NOW, to the difficult part!

The fact that your music only plays over your front speakers is because that's the 2 channels they use. stereo music basically has 2 channels, and they will be outputted to your Front L/R jack UNLESS you tell your media player to do otherwise.

If you are using winamp/media player classic/zoomplayer for audio/video playback the solution requires installation of 'AC3 filter'.
Basically what this is is a codec filter that will 'take over' the audio handling from your player, decode it and send it to your speakers. You can configure it to convert your 2 channel stereo stream into a full-fledged 5.1 stream.

Here's a link to the site:
AC3Filter

Install it, and restart if prompted to.

Now for instance you start winamp to play some music. What will happen is that a small orange-ish icon will appear on your iconbar in your lower right of screen.

Double click on it to open the AC3 Filter Properties
Here you will see under the 'MAIN' tab (loaded by default) on the left hand side a
box named "Output format"
in the listbox right under that select 3/2+SW 5.1 channels.
This will make AC3 filter turn ANY audiostream it receives into a 5.1 stream and send it to your speakers. You can see if its working by looking to the righthand side
at the "input levels" and "output levels".
If you are playing a stereo file the input levels should only show 2 green bars and the output level should show 5 or 6.

You can also select Dolby Surround/Dolby prologic or Dolby prologic II to make AC3 filter use the Dolby audio algorithm. It will have a very different effect than the previous mentioned setting. You should check both out and decide which you find best.

Sorry for this post being so long.. but I've had this problem myself aswell and I had to figure everything out on my own.
This WILL help you get 'proper' surround over your 5.1 speakers the way you want it to, I guarantee it!

Would the AC3 filter codec "Conflict" with K-Lite or any other codec package?

I doubt it.

You can simply set AC3 Filter to override any set audio processing filters and make it the default audio handling filter for audio playback on your machine.

It however will not work with VLC because VLC ONLY uses internal codecs, but any codec packs wont work with VLC anyway so that's not an issue.

I haven't tested it with WMP simply because I don't use WMP but I recon it will probably work in there as well.

IF there is any conflict (which i highly doubt) I suggest uninstalling your codecpack (Klite or whichever) and reinstalling it without the audio filter/codec it comes with.

I'm having the same (or very similar) problem as kooldude.

I'm setting up a new PC for my dad using the Vista 32-bit operating system. I'm using a set of Altec Lansing 5.1 speakers from an older Dell PC. The new PC has a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi ExtremeMusic sound card with what I believe to be the latest drivers.

I have configured the speakers as 5.1 in the windows Sound/Speaker Setup, and they test just fine when I run the Speaker Setup test. However, when I use either Windows Media Player 11 or the Creative MediaSource5 Player, I seem to get only 2.1 functionality (no rear speaker or center speaker at all when music is actually playing -- only front L/R and subwoofer). In the Creative Audio Console they also show up as 5.1.

I also tried the AC3Filter as Ayporos suggested (thanks for that suggestion), but it does not seem to be doing anything once it is launched. I'm assuming I should launch it while using my media player, but I see no activity in the input or output levels of AC3Filter when I do so. I also set the AC3Filter to 3/2+SW 5.1 channels as suggested, but still nothing (as though it's not recognizing that I have a player currently playing). I might have missed some setting in the AC3Filter when I did the setup, though.

I've gone around and around with this thing, and I'm really stumped.

One item of note (perhaps) is that the PC has the Realtek HD Audio Manager still active (as that was part of the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UDR3 motherboard setup)...so I wonder if I need to consider removing the Realtek audio drivers (?). But then again, since the speakers test just fine, I'm not sure the Realtek drivers are affecting anything while I'm using the Creative sound card.

Any help or suggestions would surely be appreciated.

I doubt it's a problem with your audio drivers varuscelli.

It probably is a communications problem between AC3filter and your media player or a problem with your AC3filter setup.

If you have your 5.1 set hooked up directly via 3 analog jacks (which I assume you have) be sure to DISABLED 'use SPDIF' in AC3filter configuration window.

Also, did you try using the Dolby prologic II setting I also recommended?

I have not tried AC3 filter with creative media source or WMP so I do not know if it even works with those programs.. worst case scenario I'd suggest you to try winamp or Media Player Classic (MPC will work with regular AC3 filter, for winamp theres an AC3 winamp download on AC3 filter site) and see if it works with those because I atleast know it DOES work for those programs.

Let me know what you find out =)

Thanks, Ayporos. I appreciate the extra feedback.

Once I get back over to my dad's place, I'll check over all this again, including your suggestions -- and I'll post back here by way of proper follow-up.

Np, I just hope you get it to work the way you want.

Also AC3 filter shouldn't run 'on its own', it is supposed to automatically load whenever you start a media player that supports it. Atleast that is how it works on my computer, I'm not sure if AC3 filter has an option to boot with windows or anything that would make it run stand-alone.

Well, as a follow-up, I never was able to get the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card working correctly with 5.1 speakers and the new Vista PC. I ended up removing it and putting it in an older PC that was limited to onboard sound...and now that PC produces better sound than it ever did before (with its 2.1 speakers). The XtremeMusic card is a second-hand card, by the way, so I have no manufacturer help or recourse on this one...just whatever I can do with it on my own.

On the new PC, I gave up and re-enabled the included Realtek sound and it's doing fine with the 5.1 speaker setup. It's putting out good-but-not-great sound, but I think it will do until we decide on a better and more readily Vista compatible sound card for that PC.

For whatever reason with the AC3Filter, I never could get it working with either Windows Media Player or Winamp (which I later downloaded). I think from what I read in briefly scanning the AC3Filter user's material with later versions of Windows Media Player AC3Filter does not show as active (maybe not even compatible with WMP 11, which we're using).

With the Winamp and AC3Filter combination, I never got a response either...but that might have been because I had loaded AC3Filter before loading Winamp (just a guess). But whatever settings I attempted to use in the AC3Filter, it didn't seem to be doing anything with Winamp, either (never launched when I launched Winamp and when launched manually AC3Filter didn't seem to be active). That's all probably error on my end for not getting setting things up correctly, but in all my playing around with the tools, I never got any response -- and I realistically ran out of time to keep playing around with it (not out of lack of interest, but lack of time). I realize, too, that when I manually "launch" the AC3Filter, I'm just launching the setup interface and not actually running the program (I think, anyway), but I still never see it active as a taskbar item at any point.

In the very least, though, I liked what I saw of Winamp and will have to play around with that a bit more.

I wonder if original poster kooldude ever got his problems worked out...