5.1 surround sound help with Windows 7

I am posting this about getting surround sound music in Windows 7 and this could probably work with Vista.

If you are using a motherboard that uses some built-in sound and you installed the drivers from the manufacturer’s website, you may notice there is no way for you to get surround sound. But here’s how you may fix that.

First, have you noticed the surround sound works fine with a movie or other media but not your music. If this is true then your hardware connections are not the issue. This solution is pretty simple to try too. Uninstall your soundcard driver and delete it. You should have a checkbox in 7 to delete the files as well. Reboot and this time let Windows install the driver from Microsoft. Then go into your sound devices and set it to the number of speakers you have. Now you may see only a choice of two being stereo and 7.1. Even if you have a 5.1 speaker system, choose 7.1. After that, go back to sound devices and click Properties. You may see a tab called “Enhancements”. If you do, be happy. Go to that tab and check the box called “Speaker Fill” if you see it. Hopefully it’s there. That is the enhancement that gives music surround sound.

The alternatives if that’s not open to you is another program besides iTunes. With Winamp, you can find a plug-in hopefully that worked with Vista for surround sound. I would link it but I had trouble finding it anywhere and had a copy of it on another computer. The plug-in is called Vista Sound 51 version 1.0.0.14. I found a link to a bugged earlier version which doesn’t work.

Also if you own Nero Show Time (part of Nero), you can play music in that with surround sound.

I don’t understand why the manufacturer’s drivers would remove the enhancement tab ability but this is one time Microsoft got something right and everyone who removed it was dead wrong.

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