PCA Forums

well, basically, my surround sound doesn't work. My two front speakers are the only two ones that work. Drivers are updated and everything. If I use the mp3 player that came with my sound card, my 4.1 system works flawlessly. But, if I try to play and mp3 in winamp, then my sub and rear speakers don't play anything. WMP and the mp3 player that came w/ my card seem to handle the 4.1 setup just fine. Looked around for some setting in winamp to enable 4.1 and didn't find anything. Using winamp 2.x Winamp 3 doens't work on my comp...so not sure if that would have the same problem or not. thanks in advance.

have you tried to set your soundcard properties so it KNOWS you got surround system?

go to control panel>sounds and multimedia>click the audio tab>under sound playback click advanced
and select the speaker configuration you have

you might have to reboot for it to work

yeah, I've done that already. The Windows sounds only play out of the front two speakers as well. Is there some third party software I could use that would force my system to use all four speakers all the time? I can't really think of anything to do.

does anyone own the C-Media 8738 card, and have a 4.1 setup that works???

found out how to do it:

Multiple Speaker Output with Winamp 2x

You need to use DirectSound Output:

Preferences (Ctrl-P) > Plug-ins > Output > Select "DirectSound Output"
Changes should take effect on the next song.

If that doesn't work make sure you have the latest version of DirectX
(v8.x or higher is required)

If that still doesn't work...
Try checkmarking "allow hardware acceleration" in DirectSound Output config
and make sure your soundcard is selected as Output Device.