Z-560/audigy 2 problems

[Corporate Thug]

i just bought an audigy 2 from BB, installed it and all, but i only seem to get sound out of 2 of the 4 speakers with my z-560. i can put either than fron or the back speakers in line out 1 and they'll work but no sound comes out of the speakers going into line out 2. any suggestions??

 

[Corporate Thug]

up

 

[Corporate Thug]

anyone?

 

[pillage2001]

Turn off M3d. Did you do the speaker diagnostics???

 

[Corporate Thug]

m3d is off, i didnt do speaker diagnositc but i know all for work cuz when i plug the front ones in line 1 i get sound, when i plug the back ones in line 1 i get sound

 

[Pariah]

Most audio is only stereo, so you will only get audio from the front speakers. The easiest way to tell if your speakers are connected and properly set up is to run the speaker calibration utility in the speaker control panel.

 

[Nebor]

Ok, here's what you do, plug your front 2 channels in the 3rd jack from the left (if your facing the card) and plug your back channel into the 2nd jack from the left.

Go into the sound properties thing and make sure sound is set to Quadrophonic Speakers. Everything should work fine then.

BTW, all my music comes out all 4 channels... even though it is stereo sound. I believe pretty much all sound cards upmix to all available channels.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: Nebor
Ok, here's what you do, plug your front 2 channels in the 3rd jack from the left (if your facing the card) and plug your back channel into the 2nd jack from the left.

Go into the sound properties thing and make sure sound is set to Quadrophonic Speakers. Everything should work fine then.

BTW, all my music comes out all 4 channels... even though it is stereo sound. I believe pretty much all sound cards upmix to all available channels.

the speakers are plugged in exactly as you have described and it is set to quadrophonic, still only get sound of of two

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Most audio is only stereo, so you will only get audio from the front speakers. The easiest way to tell if your speakers are connected and properly set up is to run the speaker calibration utility in the speaker control panel.

i had sound come out of all speakers when i had a TBSC

also, i dont know where/how to run this utiltiy

 

[Nebor]

I assume you uninstalled all your old drivers and then got the newest ones from creative? And by God never ever put the CD in your computer?

You don't have any kind of goofy "surround" knob on your speakers, do you? Somehow whenever I think my speakers have mysteriously broken, I've turned the surround knob all the way down somehow.

Also, did you change any of the actual speaker connections, like to each other\ the sub?

 

[Corporate Thug]

i havent uninstalled the tbsc or sound storm drivers, if it necessary?


no there are no knobs and i checked the connections to the sub about a million times.

 

[Nebor]

I know that generally you should uninstall your vid drivers before installing a new type of card.... I did the same when switching my sound from onboard SoundMAX to Audigy 2. Also, did you disable your soundstorm in the BIOS?

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: shady06

Originally posted by: Pariah
Most audio is only stereo, so you will only get audio from the front speakers. The easiest way to tell if your speakers are connected and properly set up is to run the speaker calibration utility in the speaker control panel.

i had sound come out of all speakers when i had a TBSC

also, i dont know where/how to run this utiltiy

The TBSC will expand the audio to multichannel. The Audigy 2 will as well if CMSS 1/2 is enabled in the EAX console. The Creative Speaker Calibrator is in the start menu in the Creative folder. If it isn't there, you didn't install everything you needed to install, and you won't be able to get anything more than stereo output no matter what you try.

 

[Corporate Thug]

i dont see it, i guess i didnt install everything then but the only thing i didnt install was the cd titeld DVD-Audio sampler, is it on that cd?

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: Pariah

Originally posted by: shady06

Originally posted by: Pariah
Most audio is only stereo, so you will only get audio from the front speakers. The easiest way to tell if your speakers are connected and properly set up is to run the speaker calibration utility in the speaker control panel.

i had sound come out of all speakers when i had a TBSC

also, i dont know where/how to run this utiltiy

The TBSC will expand the audio to multichannel. The Audigy 2 will as well if CMSS 1/2 is enabled in the EAX console. The Creative Speaker Calibrator is in the start menu in the Creative folder. If it isn't there, you didn't install everything you needed to install, and you won't be able to get anything more than stereo output no matter what you try.

Liar Liar PANTS ON FIRE. I installed NOTHING but the Creative drivers from the website and have full functionality. The only additional software it put on my comptuer is the Creative Splash Screen. I have no Creative Speaker Calibrator... Creative software is made by demons.

 

[Pariah]

There is no way to enable CMSS without installing the EAX console and there is no way to change the speaker configuration without installing the speaker control panel. That is a simple fact. If you don't have the software installed you tell me how you perform those 2 tasks?

 

[Nebor]

To change speaker config, go control panel> Sounds and Audio Devices> Speaker Settings (Advanced). Select your speaker config.

That's all I've done. Don't know what else to tell you, but I'm listening to music through 4 speakers right now.

 

[Corporate Thug]

thanx for the help all, the speaker config utilituy did the trick

 

[Pariah]

I have never figured out what that control panel window does. It does nothing on my system when I change the configuration, and it is independent of the Creative speaker control panel so it can be overridden. There is still no way to expand stereo signals without enabling CMSS which can only be done through Creative's software.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: Pariah
I have never figured out what that control panel window does. It does nothing on my system when I change the configuration, and it is independent of the Creative speaker control panel so it can be overridden. There is still no way to expand stereo signals without enabling CMSS which can only be done through Creative's software.

Alright then, I'm just a crazy man who imagines sound coming out of his back two channels when he listens to ANYTHING...

BTW, if I change the settings in that windows applet while listening to music, it changes my sound from all channels to just the front 2 if I switch to stereo speakers. So.... it seems to do what it's meant to do.

 

[Pariah]

Actually, now that I think about it, I think that's a bug in Creative's software. Someone mentioned in another thread that the most recent Audigy drivers enabled CMSS 2 by default and that even if you turned it off it would be turned back on the next reboot. So that's likely why you are getting audio out of all channels despite not being able to turn it on. Creative probably set it to on by default for people like you that didn't install the control panel applet that allows toggling on and off. I never use any expanders, since they all sound like junk to me, but to each their own.

 

[Nebor]

Well, certainly it's not "natural" to listen to stereo sound on 4 channels.... But I don't think there's any loss in quality. The exact same sound is reproduced for every speaker, right? Or does it reproduce the left channel on all the left speakers, and vice versa?

 

[Pariah]

I don't know, depends on what is actually doing the expanding. To my knowledge, WindowsXP has no builtin multichannel expansion capability. If someone else knows differently for a fact, then I'd be interested to hear about it. Most likely it's either CMSS 1 or 2 which are Creative expansion algorithms. Both of these manipulate the audio in some fasion and do not just mirror front to back. CMSS 1 sounds like complete trash, like you are sitting in a large empty concrete room with no carpets. CMSS 2 is better but still pretty poor and something I couldn't listen to for any period of time. Some people like the effects, so just because I don't like them, doesn't mean you won't like them.