5.1 Surround Channels are jumbled

Question

I had this exact setup working previously, but after a reformat it went screwy on me. I have an Onkyo A/V Receiver hooked up to my PC, via optical S/PDIF. Attached to the receiver is a 5.1 speaker setup (tested and working fine with my Xbox via the receiver).

It seems to me that the audio channels are getting mixed up somehow between the PC and the receiver. I have a 5.1 test file which plays a sounds through each speaker individually. The channels are mixed as such:

• "Left Front" plays through my right front speaker
• "Center" plays through my left front speaker
• "Right Front" plays through my center speaker
• "Left Rear" plays through my subwoofer
• "Right Rear" plays through my left rear speaker

I've tried downloading the latest Realtek HD Audio Drivers and the Realtek HD Audio Manager, but neither makes any difference. If there's a way I can manually rearrange the channels I believe it would fix the problem, but as far as I know this is impossible.

edit: Sorry, I've forgotten some basic info.

I'm running Windows 7 x64. The sound card is Realtek ALC892 embedded in a GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 motherboard.

Answer 1

You've omitted some useful information, like which chipset and which (I assume from context) Windows version, but I find http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/917148-realtek-hd-889a-windows-7-x64-no-rear-sound/ saying that you can remap the channels (and that, in fact, Windows 7 uses a different mapping by default, which might well be the cause of your problem).