5.1 speaker help

[peteyt]

Just bought a creative inspire t6300 5.1 surround sound speaker set and a creative sound blaster audio fx sound card.

Apparently there is a way to set sound cards to play music through all speakers even if the music isn't designed for surround sound but I can't seem to get this to work and so I'm only getting music through the two main speakers and the sub woofer. The set I bought has 5 speakers and a subwoofer.

I know all the speakers work as when you test it in the sound blaster control panel they all produce sound but other apps won't.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[jake87385]

Standard music files are stereo, left and right channel audio and the PC/Sound card won't automatically convert them. You could probably get a software to poorly convert stereo audio files into 5.1 but I can't imagine the result being anything decent.

Another option is trying to tell the PC or soundcard to use the side left channel as a copy of the output from the left speaker and the same with the right, this would make it use 4 speakers but it still wouldn't be proper surround sound.