Realtek 5.1/7.1 surround speaker issue in Windows 11.

Anonymous
2021-10-30T22:21:25+00:00

Hi,

Since I upgraded to Windows 11 a few days ago, I now no longer have the option in sound settings to enable 5.1 or 7.1 surround support, as I did in Windows 10. At least I believe that I had that option in Windows 10, all I have now is stereo only and I miss the added depth of sound of my 5.1 speakers. Am I failing to see the obvious, or is this an oversight in the programming. If anyone has any thoughts on solving this issue it would be most welcome. I admit I have not tried installing the Realtek Audio Manager, as that file looks as though it may not be compatible with Windows 11 although it did function in Windows 10.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-01-22T00:51:43+00:00

    Any luck?

    I have the RealTek Audio Console and it doesn't give the option for anything but stereo over Optical. I've gone to my motherboard's maufacturer's (ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming) website and it's list the same driver as what was auto installed by Windows Update. I've attempted to obtain a drive from Realtek but their site seems to only have older drivers for older OS (and it's painfully slow)

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-01-22T02:03:20+00:00

    The ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming only has a Windows 10 audio driver listed and its possible that its not fully featured but with the basics working in Windows 11. I'm leaning on that being the issue.

    Realtek goes based on chipset. I have no idea what chipset that it, but its highly probably that Realtek doesn't have an official driver on their website for Windows 11 for that chipset out anyway at this time, if they ever do.

    I would just recommend outputting multi-channel audio differently such as through the GPU HDMI, multi-channel outs analog on the back of the board, add-on card, or whatever.

    You can wait and see if it ever changes. But, I don't think you're going to find a way to get optical working again with multi-channel without waiting for a small possibility or moving back to Windows 10.

    I don't have optical so can't triple check that or whatever. Sound is complicated on computers so maybe you'll find something anyway if you try hard enough :-)

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-01-22T17:25:46+00:00

    This was broken on Win10 too

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  4. JosephT71 9,220 Reputation points
    2022-01-22T17:56:53+00:00

    Any luck?

    I have the RealTek Audio Console and it doesn't give the option for anything but stereo over Optical. I've gone to my motherboard's maufacturer's (ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming) website and it's list the same driver as what was auto installed by Windows Update. I've attempted to obtain a drive from Realtek but their site seems to only have older drivers for older OS (and it's painfully slow)

    Take your average Realtek audio chipset and you will find that Dolby and DTS are optional items. Optional means ASUS the motherboard manufacturer has to pay for it.

    https://www.realtek.com/en/products/computer-peripheral-ics/item/alc898

    Your motherboard has DTS Sound Unbound --- whatever that is. Even DTS is vague about it in their FAQ's and doesn't say anything about home theater uses (which is your optical cable).

    https://dts.com/dts-sound-unbound-faq/

    No Dolby means that you can only use PCM on optical cable --- restricted to 2 channels.

    You had Dolby license 15 years ago because you bought a DVD-burner that came with OEM versions of WinDVD, You had Dolby license 10 years old because Microsoft included DVD software in Windows 7. You had Dolby or DTS 10 years ago because you bought a PCI sound card that came with Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect that does live re-encoding to those formats.

    Long story short --- you don't have 5.1 channel on optical because you didn't pay for it.

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