Hi all, new to this forum and ROG boards in general. I picked up a crosshair V formula 2nd hand and it's about 6 months old and since I have a 7.1 speaker system I wanted to connect it up and use it to it's full potential especially to see what difference the x-fi made to gaming and sound in general. Anyway, I connected it all up as I should and from the start there was no sound coming from my rear right speaker! When I checked in the relevant programs and clicked on the speaker tests I can only hear a very low bass sound but that's obviously coming from the sub. I've tried everything so far to try and get it running as it should including the guides on here, new drivers etc all to no avail.

My 7.1 is a strange beast anyway as it's a creative inspire t7900 which uses the combined jack where there's 4 connections on some of the poles instead of the usual 3. I know they were working as they were working perfectly fine on my old motherboard so I doubt that's the problem. I did read that you're supposed to use a specific soundcard with the t7900's but I also read the work around for it which is to not use 1 of the jacks and instead replace it with a standard 3 connection jack which worked perfectly on my old mobo as I said.

Since messing around i've since noticed that it started happening to my rear left as well so I want to know if any other members have had this issue at all? I don't want to send it in under warranty as i'm in the UK and i've heard some stories about waiting times for us UK users, why the USA gets advanced replacements and we don't is beyond me and doesn't seem fair but hey, that's another thread all together! So, has anyone any ideas as to what to try next?

Lastly, does anyone know if I was to buy a 7.1 soundcard to plug in just to get my full setup working, would the X-fi considering it's software based (so I believe) work through the add in soundcard or would I have to go out and buy an expensive card just to get the same experience as I would using the X-fi? Is there any other way to test the speaker ports on the mobo to find out if it is indeed the onboard card that's the problem considering I know the speakers were working perfectly fine before I swapped my old board out? At the moment i've had to hack my wiring so that sound goes to the rear speakers from the sides as such, I know it's not true 7.1 that way but it sounds better than the rear 2 doing nothing at all!

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated as would any advice on what 7.1 soundcard would be my best (and cheapest) bet to buy to get the same experience, if not better, if it turns out that the onboard is the cause of the problems?

Thanks

P.S I thought i'd best add that in realtek sound manager and the sound blaster console show 7.1 as well as 5.1 and although test sound will come out of the other speakers it won't with the rear 2. If I remember correctly my old mobo used the same realtek manager but if only detected a 5.1 system you couldn't select 7.1 so i'm leaning more towards that it's the onboard soundcard that's causing the issue!