Surround sound deadspots

[Gorf]

I've repurposed a 5.1 surround system my wife bought on a whim because she liked the sound of the Elvis song they were playing through it in PC World a couple of years ago. In the Realtek HD Audio Manager, each playback sound comes from the correct indicated speaker.

There does seem to be the odd glitch, though. The sound of lasers firing seems to come from the rear speakers, and there are times when I can see incoming hits on the ship shield display but there's no audio of the hits themselves.

It's not an Elite-only problem, I get it in CS:GO too, so I was wondering if there's a way to correctly configure a surround system for gaming? It seems to me that there are deadspots where the driver doesn't know which speaker to use, so it doesn't use any...

[TorTorden]

I'm only guessing here, but not all surround setups are "real surround" could very well be that it's a stereo source ran through one of the common upmixers from dolby or DTS, and then output through the speakers.

It's at least how it sounds like to me via my optical out on my mobo, sometimes the algorithms work out, but more often than not they miss.

Since games are meant to fully simulate an environment, and these upmixers where really meant for video\movies it's much easier to notice when they mess up and whenever you take notice of such things you also loose immersion.

I won't claim any certainty at this, could just be a case that the engine doesn't render everything as we would have wanted or a myriad of other things.

[Gorf]

Sounds like a possibility - but the audio is coming out of the mobo from three 3½mm stereo jacks (front stereo, rear stereo, centre/sub).

[Loriath]

Is there an option for you to use a digital output? Coaxial or optical?

Also, is your sound card decoding the 5.1 ? If so, then the receiver may be doubling the decode and causing the issue. If the receiver has the option for raw, or you can go digital out it might solve the issue.

[TorTorden]

Since it's analog jacks it's probably a proper surround signal so less likely what I thought first.

Well its not uncommon for many games to simply just not render surround all that well, and while the sound of ED is quite good I remember the surround field to be rather forward centric in other words mostly stereo.

[Loriath]

You should send a note to some of the sound people at Frontier. They are very receptive.there are a few names in this thread to call out to:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=152664

[stummies]

Only recommendation I can make (please excuse if I missed this) is to update drivers. Sometimes weird audio issues can be due to old drivers. I haven't noticed this, use Realtek HD audio through the optical out to my Astro AS40 mixer with does the surround mixing to my headphones.

[Gorf]

Is there an option for you to use a digital output? Coaxial or optical?

Not really. I'd need to buy a sound card. And a different surround system. This is just a cheapo 5.1 system hanging off the mobo outputs.

Since it's analog jacks it's probably a proper surround signal so less likely what I thought first.

I'm amused by the idea that it's a "proper" system - it cost about £40 a couple of years ago and appears to have terrible reviews.

Only recommendation I can make (please excuse if I missed this) is to update drivers.

I'll give that a shot

Thanks everyone for the replies.

[Avago-Earo]

You're not using any enhancements in the Realtek settings are you? You may already know this but in case you don't; some enhancements, even the bass ones in some cases, don't give you true 5/7.1 any more. What they do is take the left and right signal and, with a slight delay, pan them to the rear pair as a 'virtual' surround sound. If you tested the speakers with these settings you would still hear the individual ones sound as they should but with the enhancements on (some may vary of course, according to their design) as soon as you run a program it will set up the signals accordingly. One way to check this is to play some stereo music on your PC and if you have sound coming from the rear speakers then it's set up wrong for true surround.

Also Optical SPDIF/Toslink won't work. See this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=427

Hope this is of some use.

Fly safe!