Windows 7 - Windows 7 5.1 surround problems (realtek)

In my Windows 7 beta I cannot get the 5.1 surround sound to work properly. I have an integrated realtek hd chip (which works perfectly fine in Vista). The 5.1 sound works well when testing the sound in the windows sound settings but whenever I try some other playback (wmp or whatever) only the front left speaker works.
I have also tried installing latest drivers from Realtek (5.1 works in their sound control aswell), some older drivers and of course the standard windows driver, all with the same results.
Any solutions or hint available out there? Thanks.

Same crap here. Been on this for hours now.. Have my setup hooked to Onkyo 5.1 surround sound and would like it back!

I also have the exact same problem. I guess I am going to have to pull out the old audigy card and see if I can get that to work. But if you do figure something out please let me know.

Are any / all / some of you using hte Windows 7 drivers or the Realtek 2.14 HD drivers?

I have tried both several times with failure :/

I don't use the Realtek built in sound, but at first I had a similiar problem with my Creative X-Fi Platinum Champion card.

To make it work properly I had to go into the Sound applet from control panel and set the speakers as my default playback device as Windows chose the SPDIF out as the default which left me with................Yup one front left speaker working and none of the others even though creative diagnostics found nothing wrong. Once I did this it all works fine for me.

I realize that yous use a different sound card than I do but I do hope this works for you as it did for me.

Brubern

I have been using Windows 7 drivers, I downloaded the other drivers and Windows 7 said it didn't support them (XP and Vista version)

The realtek HD drivers worked fine for me but what i really hate with this realtek HD on board sound is the Speaker Fill option... With Creative i could use cmss and Surround which put winamp music through all four speakers clearly. With this realtek it sounds like someone listening to music underwater(rears). The worst music rear sound i have ever heard from a sound source. I googled this and found others with the same issue there is a fix but its its just a hack job.

Hi Neil, you weren't using it with the highlighted option below were you?

Just to let you know, I have got this to work pretty well now. Not sure exactly what made this work but I'm again using the latest Realtek HD drivers and after very much fiddling in the Realtek control panel I checked the 'Speaker fill' and 'Bass Management' options and voila! Also played around a little with 'Room correction' to enhance the sound.
I'm very much certain that I did test these settings before so I don't know what caused the 'working-trigger'. The Realtek control panel is just horrible anyways