Need help hooking my laptop to 5.1 surround sound.?

Question

My laptop has a realtek 888 sound system and when i go to the control panel and choose 5.1 there is no sound. When I hook it up using a headphone jack there is no surround sound even though i hear sound from all the speakers. On my surround sound set there is a test button and all the speakers are in the right place. I also have an external usb sound card and hooked up to my surround sound system with SPDIF but i only get the first 2 channels. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You won't get surround through the headphone jack. it is not possible. A headphone jack can support only 2 channels.

Does your USB soundcard have 3 headphone style jacks on it?

You need 3 headphone jacks to accomodate all 5.1 channels(6) if you want to plug the speakers directly into the soundcard.

Read through the troubleshooting portion of the sound card manual. Maybe you need to reinstall the drivers for the sound card.

Install any control software which may have come with the sound card.