Difficulty with 5.1 sound, Realtek HD Audio Manager

[Tpaign]

I am posting because I am having trouble getting my 5.1 system to work with my Acer Aspire 7551 laptop the way I want it to. My laptop is connected to my receiver by HDMI, but Realtek HD Audio Manager only supports stereo sound. I have attached a screenshot. Sound only comes out of the front L and R speakers. I understand that music is only mixed in 2-channel stereo, but I have six speakers and I want sound to come out of them.

When I test the speakers in Windows control panel, I can confirm that all of them are working (I have attached a screenshot of that too). I tried installing the Realtek HD audio driver from the Acer website and it didn't fix the problem. Also, I'm not sure how to find out what my sound card is. If someone who is more familiar with this sort of thing could help me with that, I would appreciate it.

Edit: Notice the two speakers shown in the screenshot of Realtek HD Audio Manager. When I click on these to test, sound comes from the laptop speakers, not my 5.1 set!

 

[stormy13]

Tpaign, welcome to the Seven Forums.

part of the problem is that the HDMI audio has nothing to do with the onboard Realtek, it is actually part of the integrated HD 4250 video and requires the AMD/ATI video driver to be installed which will also install the HDMI audio driver. You should be able to use the latest directly from AMD for it,

http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/1810-latest-amd-catalyst-video-driver-windows-7-a.html

but if not grab the latest one from Acer that says it is for the HD 6650M/6850M, as it also has support in it for the video in your laptop.

P.S. For what it is worth the audio built into the onboard video is also Realtek based, but as far as I know doesn't work with the reference Realtek driver, and only works with the one included with the video driver or the one directly from Realtek that specifies support for AMD/ATI HDMI audio,

Realtek

 

[Tpaign]

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, the Realtek HD audio manager is irrelevant. After messing around with some settings, I am hearing surround sound now when I play something which is set up for it, like a video game. For stereo sources, like listening to music, I guess I can just enable the "ext. stereo" option on my receiver which makes the sound come from all speakers. That works fine for me.

 

[stormy13]

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, the Realtek HD audio manager is irrelevant.

Correct, it doesn't even get installed with the driver included with the AMD video driver. It may get installed when you get the HDMI driver directly from Realtek and allow for extra configuration options in the audio manager of the HDMI audio, but someone else will have to confirm whether it does or not as I have never tried it.

Also if you have installed the AMD driver you should have the HDMI showing like this in the Windows playback properties,



with it set as the default playback device when in use.