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My computer is connected to my receiver using an HDMI cable and the DVI to HDMI adapter I received with the graphics card - ATI Radeon 4870. On my old system (Vista 64 bit) everything worked well, and the playback devices showed the HDMI output transfering 5.1 and it was indeed doing it (I could hear 5.1 audio out of the speaker system).

I recently installed Windows 7 64 bit, and installed the Realtek HD audio driver R2.14 which enables me to select 5.1 audio in the playback devices configuration window. this is the same procedure I did for my old system.

However even though it shows as if the output is 5.1 audio, it only outputs stereo. That is, when I test the rear speakers (click on their picture) the front speakers are playing. There is nothing wrong with the hardware (Computer, ATI card, receiver or speakers) since everything worked well on my old vista system.

How can I change it to true 5.1 audio?

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  • Can this help? superuser.com/questions/64767/realtek-hd-audio-5-1-on-windows-7
    – CD.
    Commented Nov 7, 2010 at 11:31
  • Unfortunately no. I cannot find the GUI interface anywhere ("Realtek Audio Manager"), and when i installed the latest Realtek HD Audio drivers I only had a "Stereo" option in playback devices. The R2.14 version of the drivers added the 5.1 and 7.1 options, but it doesn't work properly...
    – Oded
    Commented Nov 8, 2010 at 5:19
  • i've only ever had stereo over hdmi - let me know if it works out.
    – RobotHumans
    Commented Nov 8, 2010 at 20:58

2 Answers 2

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Have you tries using Windows own driver for your sound card? If there is any you can change the output under "Control Panel". Under Hardware Setting, right click your Sound Card and update the driver using MS drivers.

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  • Yep, tried it, Windows' driver allows only stereo in the playback devices HDMI configuration... only Realtek ATI HDMI audio driver adds the 5.1 and 7.1 options (for me at least)
    – Oded
    Commented Nov 9, 2010 at 11:11
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+50

Found the solution, it was composed of two things:

  1. I noticed in the device manager that the driver that was installed was not the Realtek ATI HDMI driver, even though I installed it. So I updated the driver and choose the Realtek driver manually (I think it was called HDXATI64.inf, or something like that).

  2. The second problem was actually the receiver, which was not configured correctly for the computer's HDMI input (probably after a power cut), and was downmixing all the channels to stereo...

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  • Did you need to restart the computer ?
    – Cyril Duchon-Doris
    Commented Mar 5, 2015 at 11:43

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