issue regarding surround sound speakers not working properly

[Evanokato]

So I have now hung the rear speakers in the room but now surround sound does not seem to work. In windows test environment I only get sound when testing the front left speaker. All the speakers then make sound. But if I click another one, I don't hear anything.

I am using a 3.5mm audio jack into my asrock b450 pro4
logitech z906

[Eradition]

Sound like you should confirm that you have plugged it to the correct 3.5mm audio jack and check your settings.

According to the manual of that mobo, you need to be plugged to the front panel HD audio module and set the speaker configuration to "5.1 speakers " in the Realtek HD Audio Manager.

I suppose you could also try the lime colored rear 3.5 mm and set it to 5.1 in said Realtek software

[_I_]

a single 3.5mm jack is stereo, or at best 4ch matrix (aka stereo surround, left, right, center, common rear)

if its using 3x jacks, it can be 5.1 (independent left, right, center, rr, rl, sub)
you need to configure the jacks in realtek audio control panel

get the correct drivers from the mobo mfg site

[Blaagh]

z906 comes with a 3x 3.5 mm cable for input 1 (green (front) + black (back) + orange (sub+center))

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You motherboard only has 3 audio ports, so you need to launch the Realtek Audio Manager and then change to 5.1 from there. Then note the changes to the Blue and Pink port. If you use 3x Analog Surround on such an audio as your motherboard has, this will switch over the Mic and Line-In to all be Line-Out for Surround Sound purposes. So if you then wish to use a 3.5mm analog Mic afterwards, you will have to use the front mic jack on your PC Case.

[Evanokato]

Thanks for the replies, after some asking and research i got a second hand sound card and will send the signal via an optical cable to the card and from the card with usb to the pc

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Be sure to disable the onboard audio in the BIOS and uninstall the Realtek stuff.

[_I_]

just disabling the unused ports in windows audio control panel should do the trick too

[crunchyfrog]

引用自 _I_：

just disabling the unused ports in windows audio control panel should do the trick too

This si big one in Windows 10 especially.

I use a few audio engineering programs and pieces of hardware. If I say, plug in a mixer via USB it will add that as a soundcard. It will absolutely screw with Windows.

I could play a Youtbe video say, and it might choose my screen to replay the audio out of, or it might try to send it to the mixer.

Windows 10 is pretty notorious for doing what the hell it thinks, so first port of call even if just testing out stuff is to disable the sound devices you ain't using under windows settings.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well Windows can't use the "this is the default audio to use for web browser audio" method of thinking if that hardware is not always present.

In that case you plug in the audio (lets say USB audio device) then left click the audio icon in Windows (the little speaker) and then choose the device. It's really that simple most of the time.

Not sure Windows 10 has this but in Windows 11 I can go into the Windows Audio Mixer and while its showing active apps/browsers with audio (lets say VLC Media Player for example) I can then tell Windows to use this audio device as a default for that app. So lets say I have a Laptop w/ a 4K TV connected via HDMI. I can select in the Windows audio mixer to default VLC media player to use the TV Speakers. It will then do so for that app as a default from now on. It will play through the Laptop speakers however if the TV is not On/Connected since it can't see that device when its in that state. Even if I start playing a video/movie through VLC with this default applied and thus it starts playing the audio through the laptop speakers since the tv is off or disconnected, I can pause VLC (oh my bad, connect the tv) and I connect the TV hdmi cable to laptop and it takes a brief moment and now the audio comes through the TV. Again working, based on me telling Windows to use the TV speakers as the default for VLC.