no surround sound on my pc

[shrmn8rpoptart]

i have some altec lansing speakers for my dell pc. i guess they're not technically surround sound, since i don't have a center channel, just four speakers and a sub.

anyways, i just noticed today that both of the back speakers are not playing. they are both plugged in, and i listened, and they both have a noise coming out of them that sounds like dead air on an fm station, so i know that they are working, they just don't have sound coming out of them.

i thought maybe itunes was messing with them, but it did the same thing with windows media player. i went to the control panel, and told it that i have quadrophonic speakers. i made sure the volume was on. still, nothing seems to work.

i'm a little frustrated, because rattle and hum does not sound the same unless i am completely immersed in the music, from all sides.

anyone have any suggestions on what to try to make them work?

 

[u2popmofo]

They arent blown, are they?

That sucks!

 

[shrmn8rpoptart]

shoot i hope not, i personally haven't had them up loud enough to do that...i would think anyway that i would know if i had caused it.

i might have to ask my brother and sister though...

 

[The Sneak]

You're better off than me, I had no sound driver for 2 years!

 

[cmb737]

I would guess without intimate knowledge of your audio routing that it is a simple setting. However, what you will hear will not be surround sound, nor quad...but simply double stereo. It may not be a setting at all, but just an inability of the program (or sound card) to play on multiple outputs.


Surround sound is mixed with 6 distinct channels.

 

[shrmn8rpoptart]

ok...right, well the setup i have is whatever like the $60 altec lansing upgrade from dell is. i know it's not surround...but no sound comes out of the back two at all. could this be because i have it set to the quadrophonic setting? it's not like they never worked, i just noticed one day that there was no sound coming from behind me anymore...

 

[nbcrusader]

Do you have the proper sound card?

 

[shrmn8rpoptart]

Do you have the proper sound card?

i would assume so, i've been using the exact same setup since i got my computer in the spring of 2003 with no problems. it wasn't until just recently that i started noticing the problem.

i tried changing my settings back to the "desktop stereo speaker" setting as opposed to the "quadrophonic speaker" setting. it didn't help either way.

i have also tried listening to music in, and adjusting the settings of itunes, wmp, and winamp, all to no avail.

i tried turning off my computer, and turning off the sub and speakers, then turning everything on, that didn't work. i checked to make sure that everything was properly plugged in. it was.

i tried going through the trouble shooting through the windows control panel, and none of the questions quite described my problem. i followed a couple of the paths all the way through, but couldn't find anything wrong in my computer.

i am no computer genius, and these are about the only things i could think of. anyone else have ideas?