I'm rather new to 5.1 sound and recently realized that my Chaintech 7VIF4 motherboard's integrated audio is supposed to support 5.1 output. In the C-Media configuration utility I can change from regular 2-channel output to either 4-channel or 6-channel. Changing to 6-channel routes the 2-channel output (the "green jack") to the front speakers, the line-in ("blue") jack to the rear speakers, and the microphone ("red") jack to the center/subwoofer.

The output on the front and rear speakers works fine, but I was curious about the center and subwoofer on the microphone jack. My question is that the microphone jack only provides a single mono channel. So when I tested it with a set of regular PC stereo speakers, the center channel and subwoofer channel both come out of the same left speaker.

Is this typical? If I go out and purchase a 5.1 set of speakers, will the subwoofer and center speakers work in a respectable way? Or am I better off just using a 4.0 configuration for this sound device?