Windows 11 surround 5.1 doesn't work on the back channel

I understand, and I truly hope there's another solution. Nonetheless, I'm leaving the comment here since I'm glad I could fix it at least for chrome and hopefully other people could find it useful.

I hope this helps someone. Unfortunately, answers.microsoft.com is mostly a failure on answers 99% of the time and we end up searching other forums.

Those chrome flags don't do anything except telling chrome not to touch the audio stream in any way and let the audio driver do "speaker fill", which is exactly what I was talking about.

Here is the precise moment when Chrome added some of these flags and the explanations in the thread why they don't work sometimes (because the audio driver either lied about the number of channels in wasapi mode or that the audio driver doesn't have "speaker fill" or that the audio driver's "speaker fill" is buggy).

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=479057

So those flags MAY fix some of the symptoms, but they don't actually fix the actual issue.

Hello,

If anyone on the web encounters this problem, I want to share the fix that worked for me:

Fix for Chrome: Added the following command on the google chrome shortcut:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-audio-output-resampler --try-supported-channel-layouts --disable-features=AudioServiceOutOfProcess

These are other options that I have seen worked for other people but none of this worked if only used individually so I ended up trying to combine the 3 options above.

--try-supported-channel-layouts

--force-wave-audio

--disable-audio-output-resampler

--disable-features=AudioServiceOutOfProcess

--disable-audio-output-resampler

I also ensured that my output speakers is configured to be using the right settings as 5.1 surround by going to mmsys.cpl>select your speakers>configure speakers>5.1 or 7.1 surround. Click next and so on.

I hope this helps someone. Unfortunately, answers.microsoft.com is mostly a failure on answers 99% of the time and we end up searching other forums.

the 5.1 works perfectly with:

netflix windows 11 app

vlc

steam games for example cyberapunt 2077

1. because you showed us every single screenshots in your initial post that are irrelevant to the actual feature that needs to be turned on manually, which proved the point that it wasn't turned on manually and would therefore not play stereo audio sources in the rear speakers.

You seem to think 5.1 computer speakers are like car stereo in that you listen to music and the front speakers in the front doors would make sound and the rear speakers in the rear doors would make sound automatically. No, that's not it. You have to manually turn it on which by the screenshots you provided in your initial post didn't even know the existence of such function until I pointed it point.

2. of course nuking the pc is an extreme solutions, that's why I am only suggesting this extreme solution after me providing you help for 4 pages, after multiple tech support from asus and spotify giving you the cold shoulder.

Netflix on internet browsers can't do 5.1. If netflix the windows app can't do 5.1 on your computer even after you set your computer to 5.1, then there is something seriously wrong with your system.

3. did I say you f'd up? No, I said you listened to the wrong people.

Do you think I suggest to you nuke your computer because I know precisely how you screwed up your system and not tell you how to fix it the correct way? It is precisely the opposite, no help from tech support, there are a million combinations of things that could go wrong by randomly listening to internet help. You kept on arguing about point (1) showed us precisely that you don't understand the problem and therefore will never figure out how to fix this problem on your own.