Windows 7 5.1 Surround wont work

Downfall

New Member
When I set up my speakers in the control panel everything works fine (you press the speaker you want to test and it plays a test sound) but when I open a music file in Windows Media Player i only get the front left and right speakers to work. Anyone know how to fix this? I've looked in the WMP options but I cant find anything and when I tried with winamp and had the surround box in the options checked it didnt work either.
I'm running the 64 bit version build 7000.
 
Im not all that familiar with WMP but I know in Winamp if you tick that "allow surround sound" box the file you are playing still needs to be recorded in 5.1 for the effect to work. Forcing those effects usually are an option with your sound card drivers. Does seem odd the 5.1 test works in the controll panel, that says to me your drivers are working correctly. Id look for an update anyways.

This all worked before Windows 7?
 
that's normal behaviour as far as I know. if you set your sound card to 5.1 sound but play a 2-channel-file it will only play on the front. if you set your system-wide settings to 2-channel it might work. I'm not quite sure because I got a decoderbox and I think my decoderbox is responsible for playing 2-channel-stuff on all boxes, but maybe it's windows itself.
 
its a bug.

surround sound via spidif doesn't work in W7 like it did in Vista.

some people have reported success with replacing a file in W7 with one from Vista.

Link Removed due to 404 Error

It didn't work for me though :(
 
I fixed it now. I went into the control panel and opened the soud options and then speaker options. clicked the tab "Enhancements" and then checked the boxes" bass managemen"t and "speaker fill". Its prolly not real surround but all speakers and the subwoofer works when listening to music and its good enough for me :p
Thanks for all your answers :)
 
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