5.1 Sound with Win7 64bit

[Mayhemic.MAD]

I have a Creative Audigy 2 PCI soundcard.
When I installed Win7 Professional 64 bit, about 6 months ago, I tried to play Battlefield 2 and noticed that I only had stereo sound instead of my precious 5.1.
After like two days of research on the internet and trying different drivers, OpenAl installations and creative alchemy software it finally worked in 5.1 again with ingame setting Hardware and EAX enabled.
The problem is I was never really sure what the solution was. Now I had to reinstall windows (my system SSD failed) and am now unable to get it working again. 
I already tried to use my onboard sound (has 5.1 via chinch as well) but BF2 still uses only front speakers.

So my question is:
Is anyone running win7 and using 5.1 sound in battlefield 2 ?
If so what soundcrad do you use ? (might buy me a new one since mine is about 8 years old now)
Or does anyone know a driver / OpenAl combination that does 5.1 with a Audigy2 soundcard under Win7 64bit?

If I turn around ingame and sounds don´t turn around with me, all my imersion is gone
Since I had it already running, even without need for winxp compatability or running fh2 as admin, I won´t rest until it´s working again, but this is freaking me out right now.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Strat_84]

Well, you already got the answer I think.

1°) Install the Creative drivers
2°) Get into the Creative panel and make sure the 5.1 speakers system is selected
3°) Install Alchemy. If BF2 isn't automaticaly detected, then add the path to BF2.exe
4°) Set the EAX and hardware acceleration ON in Battlefield 2

And everything should work.

P.S: A Audigy 2 soundcard may be old, but it's still a very good one. Much better than the crap we can find inside motherboards. There's no need changing it if it still works well.

[Mayhemic.MAD]

1. I installed the latest Creative driver.
2. Speakers are on 5.1 via Creative speaker controlpanel and Windows Control Panel and 5.1 works when testing there.
3. I just found out that Alchemy is only needed for DirectSound3D games, but BF2 uses OpenAL. Nevertheless I installed it and setup BF2.
4. I can switch between all modes in Battlefield2 but always get only front speakers.

I tried other games like Dirt2 and Wolfenstein and both having working 5.1, it even seems like dirt2 is using OpenAL as well. Really weird.. 

Maybe I should try to clean all drivers and start again because I also think it should work that way, no clue what went wrong here. Currently I´m trying to check OpenAL functionality with the tools from the OpenAL SDK.

And yes, the hardware is good, but Creative driver support has always been a problem.. I once tried to get my game surround sound via digital output.. works only if you buy some Direct-DTS software from creative

[Strat_84]

I might have made a mistake, Alchemy may be not needed after all. I've checked my own setup and BF2 is recognized in Alchemy, but not activated. 
But it's a bit different, I've a X-Fi soundcard with only 2 speakers (I did a try with 4 speakers a while ago though and it worked)

[NTH]

Try disabling your onboard speaker from the bios or the audio panel.
I can say it does work with win7 64-bit. I use a G35 headset. It comes with it's own drivers.

[Mayhemic.MAD]

Well, finally I got it working again.

After I installed my OS, I installed an old creative driver and the Alchemy software. The creative Autoupdate then installed a newer driver and it wasn´t working.

Now I cleaned all creative drivers, removed Alchemy and installed only the newest driver.
Tried to run BF2.exe and it stopped immediately with Error 0x000142. *panic mode on*
I removed the dsound.dll and dsound.ini that alchemy had copied in my bf2 folder and after this I was able to start BF2 again. *panic mode off*
This means obviously that the BF2.exe is using the alchemy files in its folder and these apparently need libs from elsewhere themselves, that I had uninstalled.
Still BF2 ran only in stereo, so I reinstalled Alchemy and told it to put it´s files to my bf2 folder again and voila 5.1 Sound in all it´s analog transmitted glory.  

Seems like I just should have uninstalled and reinstalled Alchemy after the driver update all the time  

And I´m even more confused now about what soundsystem BF2 uses or what is supported by this Alchemy software..  

Thanks for help !

[Strat_84]

The tip is to never use autoupdates for a driver. That's the best way to mess up your system. 

[NTH]

Creative drivers and support works in mysterious ways.

[Mayhemic.MAD]

I got fooled by all my other easy to install Hardware, that does have no Problems with drivers and such. My Gigabyte Board has a working driver update tool and my Graphics Card does not even need a reboot after driver installation.
I mean it´s 2010 and the days where I had to set IRQ, DMA and Blaster variable in my autoexec.bat are long gone.
I also work a lot with Linux were you do just a "emerge world" or "apt-get update" to get updates for every single installed program / driver with just this one command.. Only on windows I need to search all those websites myself for the newest drivers.. 

Well, and my Super Talent FTM64GX25H SSD really seems to be dead..
I flashed it to newest firmware and all I get now is E/A errors.. *aargh* 
Running win7 on a old 80 gig HD now