Hi,
I have just got myself a new sound card which has 10 mono outputs. In vista (due to some random technical reasons), these are grouped into 5 stereo pairs. What I want is a way of using this to do 5.1 surround, preferably appearing as a separate playback device. However, I have no idea if this is possible, or how to do it if it is. I'm fairly certain there's no vista option to enable this: I'm expecting to rely on something else entirely.
I've tried the same out on an xp computer: the drivers are different, and while I can play a 5.1 vid in win media player, certain other applications (games etc), refuse to do this.
I'd like a way of doing this in either OS, but at the moment, I'm fairly stuck.
Any help, even vague pointers, would be appreciated.
Cheers
Mike

I doubt you will find a work-around. It all depends on the soundcard driver (supplied by the hardware manufacturer). The driver works like an interpreter between the hardware and the application/operating system. All of the data passes through the driver and the soundcard's capabilities are communicated via the driver.

The communication protocol on the application/O.S. side are standardized by microsoft. So, any application can work with any Windows soundcard. But, the hardware side is usually proprietary to the hardware manufacturer. So, the driver has to be written by the hardware manufacturer.