Realtek AC1150 5.1 audio only giving stereo

[Colif]

Yesterday I reset windows 10 as I was having various issues, and ever since then my 5.1 speakers will only work in stereo. This is odd as before the reset they worked fine in Win 10 and I haven't touched any of the connections. I tried Digital but it stopped seeing my speakers altogether.

I have the latest drivers that show on the Asus web site, I couldn't find any on the realtek site that are newer. The drivers I have now are 6.0.1.7525.

I tried changing speaker config in windows Sound settings but it makes no difference. The sound test in the realtek software only plays sound through front speakers. In the past I could get it use all four surround speakers in quadraphonic but not this time. Setting to 7.1 makes no difference either. As a work around I have set speakers to 6 channel direct on the back of the Z5500 control unit but I have never had to do this before.

Speakers: Logitech Z5500 digital 5.1
PC
Asus Z97 Pro Wifi
Intel I5 4690K
Win 10 64 bit

I doubt any other specs are necessary to list.

 

[Amdlova]

i think you need a clean install of sound card. its bugged like the windows 8 was. remove the drivers and delete and install again.

 

[dudio]

Do you think maybe you used an older driver version before?
Maybe try rolling back ?

 

[Colif]

I cannot roll back to a previous version as I did a Windows reset yesterday (I took option to save files, it reinstalled win 10 so it should be fresh now).

I haven't removed drivers and reinstalled yet as I want to wait a few days and see if any of the problems I had before start to happen again...

 

[Colif]

I removed the realtek drivers in control panel, restarted PC and then installed the same drivers again from the Asus web site and it didn't change anything, the only way I can get 5.1 right now is with them set to 6 channel direct, leaving the surround speakers working in theory as they work if I test them in the software or Windows sound settings menu, but very few YouTube videos make use of them now. Groove music doesn't use them either... I am not sure what uses them now.

 

[Colif]

I updated drivers to latest version on realtek web site. Didn't fix problem.

Then I attached a digital audio cable instead and they work now. Why you confuse me like this windows, the cables that I had been used had always worked until this week... why.

Thanks for the help anyway

 

[Amdlova]

unistall your driver. go in your hardware manager and click in your sound card and delete all the installation drivers. reboot and install your card again. maybe it will fix your drivers problem. I got this problem again and again in windows 8 8.1 10. Hdmi cable in the old AMD cards can have alot of bugs. microsoft doesn't fix the problems over the windows. I miss my windows 7.

 

[Colif]

Since then I have reformatted windows again as the problem that led me to do reset happened again. I have since reached conclusion that speakers themselves are to blame for my start up problems.

I found I had no sound again last night and had been using the optical connection. I restarted PC and experienced a really log time delay between the logon screen and desktop appearing. I then d/c the optical cable and shutdown/restarted pc and it booted instantly.

I then swapped to the analog cables, once again found I couldn't get sound from rear speakers and start up was acting strange again. I have unplugged speakers again and start/shutdown seems back to normal.

I don't know if its the cables I am using or the hardware itself. Speakers are almost 13 years old so its possible its them. I really don't know without buying new cables.

Since I am using my steelseries headphones until I find an alternative, and they run through their own software, I have disabled the realtek software from start

 

[Sadlereldas]

Hey man, I had a hell of a time getting the rear channel to work as well. It is extremely frustrating, once you have windows 10 configured for 5.1 output then go into your RealTek HD manger (right click the Realtek speaker in your task bar). At the bottom of the application you will see your analog audio ports represented as circles of different colours. Click on the Black one and change it to rear speaker out, it may be set to side speakers. This will reset every freaking time you shutdown your computer. This was the issue on my Asus Z97 with analog hookups to Logitech speakers.

 

[Colif]

The solution was my speakers were dying. a few days after this they stopped working in analog or digital. It was obvious, with speakers attached pc would half the time not even load a desktop, whereas with them detached it loaded like there wasn't anything wrong. Replaced speakers with a new set of logitech speakers, only looked back to make sure old set found a good home as throwing them out was too painful an idea.