Mysterious Sound Issue - Ghost????

[CosmicSurfer]

OK.. I'll try and explain this.

I installed Win7 Pro RTM last Monday. Mostly the sound is Fine... BUT....

I noticed that on Some files the sound sounds Muffled and at a REAL low volume.. But other files sound Fine.

Example.. The Update voice notice when AVAST updates definitions is almost unrecognizeable.. like an Audio Blur. Some AVI movies play fine.. some play like a whisper.. and I never can turn the volume up enough to listen comfortably. So Voice Alarms work OK, but with Diminishing Volume as the file plays.. some are just Murmers... BTW I marked the Sound Files NOT to Reduce Volume when played in Volume control Properties... but they still seem to it.

Bells and whistles type noises play fine, Some don't. Most of my Music will play but Some files are totally muffled and distorted. They are all MP3files.

I have updated the Creative Driver installed by Windows during the Full Install, but in actual fact the installed Driver went down from 5.12.1.2018 that was Installed by MS to 5.12.1.2016 after installing the X-Fi Xtrteme Audio Download 1.04.0090 from the Creative site.

In the Device Manager, under sound I see 2 Drivers.. The Creative one and a Generic "HIgh Definition Audio Device" driver that was installed by Windows... I gues this is suppossed to replaced the Realtec Driver that I had disabled in Vista. It was enabled in Win7... and so wass the X-Fi Xtreme, so I tried disabling it.. but that didn't improve the sound on the problem files. (These files played fine in Vista.)

I don't know what additional information I can add... or what other thing to try! It's a Mystery ????

CS

BTW - Should I leave the Generic "HIgh Definition Audio Device" driver Enabled or keep it Disabled and only let the Creative Driver work ??

 

[CosmicSurfer]

SOLVED

OK...so it turns out that my system defaulted to 7.1 surround (which my card supports) but I only have 2.1...so the sound, randomly, would be pumped to the surround channels and not the front. By changing the speaker configuration the sound now works perfectly. *sigh* When in doubt, look for something simple!

NOW.. Everything is GREAT...

I LOVE WINDOWS 7
CS