Realtek HD plight; Digital Output? What is this!?

[Bluhman]

Alright; my Windows 7 Desktop is installed with a Realtek HD sound card, which is so utterly finnicky and completely useless when it comes to MIDI. I've tolerated it's slight problems for quite a while now, but it's come to a head; my computer cannot play Sibelius sound sets correctly (which is bad; Sibelius is a composing program, and if I can't play sound, then I have no clue what my music sounds like).

I looked a bit further into the problem to find out that, for some stupid reason, Sibelius' sound was playing on 'Realtek Digital Output' instead of 'Speakers' like everything else was. What was more interesting was, even if I couldn't hear anything, the sound bars turned green when I tested the device for sound... Well, OK. Maybe if I find out where 'Digital output' plugs in, I'll be able to get my compositions sounding good on my computer, right?

Well, no. The jack that I apparently need to plug into is the 'ATAPI Internal ATAPI Jack', which, judging by the name, requires me to open up my computer and somehow make it so that my headphones go through one of my six computer tower walls to get some sound, providing there even is a so-called ATAPI jack on the inside of my computer to begin with.

So, what I need here is a bit of a solution, which can be either one of two things:

A: Find out how I can prevent Sibelius from playing on 'Digital Output' and play instead on the much more sensible 'Speakers' option

or

B: Find out how I can make my speakers play 'Digital Output' as well as... Um, speaker stuff. :sarc:

Anyone care to help me on this puzzling challenge?

 

[fireberd]

I'm a musician and also have a recording studio using Sonar recording software. I looked at the Sibelius site and couldn't get much information from that site. They do have tech support, etc and that may be the best place to start - make sure you have the program configured correctly.

In reference to the sound card, you have to have it set to use your speakers in the Control Panel - Sound panel in order to hear audio in the speakers. If the Digital Out is selected (S/PDIF) then you have to have an external amplifier that will accept S/PDIF in order to hear anything.

If the Sibelius program uses MIDI to generate the sound (instruments) then the built in Microsoft GS Wavetable MIDI Synth, but this converts the MIDI to a form that can be used by the sound card (RealTek in this case) to generate analog audio.

ATAPI references the CD/DVD drives and not related to the Realtek or sound generation.

If everything else works OK, with the audio then the issue is probably with the applications program and a configuration.