Rear speakers work partially

northernbard · 16 Mar 2015

Running Realtek HD Audio on Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit.
Have quadraphonic speakers set up, which work fine during configuration test.
Rear speakers won't work for music playback or other audio files on computer, but
they DO work for YouTube, Pandora, etc., anything from the Internet. Strange.
Have tried new drivers but to no avail.

fireberd · 16 Mar 2015

Some audio is only 2 channel stereo and will not play on all speakers. A quad system, which is no longer specifically supported may not synthesize the surround sound like a 5.1 system does.

northernbard · 16 Mar 2015

fireberd said:

Some audio is only 2 channel stereo and will not play on all speakers. A quad system, which is no longer specifically supported may not synthesize the surround sound like a 5.1 system does.

Thanks fireberd. But with XP I could run any audio file through 4 speakers. Granted it might not be proper "quad" sound but the output was there. Why would Internet audio work on front and rear speakers now but no other file? What changed with Windows 7?

fireberd · 17 Mar 2015

Windows Vista/Win7/Win8 processes some audio functions different than XP. In XP, for example, you could have two different audio playback devices, in Win 7 only one (unless you can find a 3rd party program that will give you two).

I used to work the Dell forums and playback such as you reference came up frequently as a question around the time Vista came out.