Issues with 5.1 Surround Sound with Windows 10

There are no "compatibility" issues with Windows 10 per se.

For a while, people were able to use their old windows xp or vista or windows 7 apps and drivers with Windows 10. Then Microsoft made changes to the OS to close security vulnerabilities, thus making old stuff "incompatible".

This is a licensing issue. Nobody is paying Dolby licensing fees because Google/Youtube + Netflix won the war.

Windows Licensing Program

If you would like to license the Dolby Audio™ technologies included in the Microsoft Windows® operating system, please complete the questionnaire on the Windows Licensing Program page and indicate how many devices your OEM company will be making per year. Based on your response, we will assist you with obtaining a new licensing agreement to support the use of Dolby Audio™ (supporting Dolby Digital Plus™) in Windows and which will be natively supported by the new Microsoft Edge browser for the playback of web-based content as well as accessible by third-party Windows Store and Universal apps. You must have an agreement with Dolby prior to the shipment of any Windows devices.

https://professional.dolby.com/licensing/

I am running Win 10 Pro . Realtech driver dated 7/2/19, version 6.0.87.46.1. 5.1 works that way.

Only in movies. Not music....which is what this thread is about.

I can not get 5.1 Surround Sound to play for my computer with any audio player; i.e. DVD/CD optical drive, Pandora, etc. but when I run an audio test using the device manager it tests perfectly.  I have heard that there might be a compatibility issue with 5.1/7.1 Surround Sound and Windows 10.

Please let me know if anybody has had this problem and what the solution is.

"Here it is September 2020 and MS, Windoes 10 STILL DOES NOT SUPPORT 5.1 SURROUND SOUND! I'm looking at posts from June 2015 stating the same problems, nice going Microsoft, you should be fired!

True as an IT director on both the public and private side we always have issues with MS software.. they do not test well causing the end user to do it for them... even when told they have a problem that refuse to spend much resource to fix it.

Net they are like most companies driven by CEO comp and cutting corners to drive up the stock price. They have also off- shored most of their tech staff where the analysts and programmers move from company to company. Also that resource is mostly script driven... so if it's not on the script... you get the picture.