speaking of drivers - out of phase sound

I am having a problem with the sound going out of phase. I have a dual
boot; Vista Home Premium 64, and second partition for XP. With XP I did not
install any special drivers from the Asus installation disk of my P5E
motherboard - maybe I should. But I did install it for Vista.

When things are working okay in Vista, but I need to use XP and I have to
boot to XP I am finding that when come back to Vista I end up with something
really badly messed up in the sound for all apps, like iTunes, where it
sounds like I am listening to surrond speakers full of swirling out of phase
info, with no front channel stuff. I only have front channels hooked up. I
then have to get out the P5E disk and reinstall the drivers, and sometimes
even that doesn't work the first time. I have always been able to get the
sound back with reinstalls although today I've done two reinstalls of the
drivers and I still have the problem. Plus I'd like to figure out what the
problem is and not have to deal with this. I am using the SoundMax drivers
off the Asus P5E install disk.

\Walter

"William" <> wrote in message
news:J8idnZyJs9VdGo7VnZ2dnUVZ_s2tnZ2d@palinacquisi tion...
>
> "Walter_Slipperman" <> wrote in message
> news:BKtQj.22973$%...
>>I am having a problem with the sound going out of phase. I have a dual
>>boot; Vista Home Premium 64, and second partition for XP. With XP I did
>>not install any special drivers from the Asus installation disk of my P5E
>>motherboard - maybe I should. But I did install it for Vista.
>>
>> When things are working okay in Vista, but I need to use XP and I have to
>> boot to XP I am finding that when come back to Vista I end up with
>> something really badly messed up in the sound for all apps, like iTunes,
>> where it sounds like I am listening to surrond speakers full of swirling
>> out of phase info, with no front channel stuff. I only have front
>> channels hooked up. I then have to get out the P5E disk and reinstall
>> the drivers, and sometimes even that doesn't work the first time. I have
>> always been able to get the sound back with reinstalls although today
>> I've done two reinstalls of the drivers and I still have the problem.
>> Plus I'd like to figure out what the problem is and not have to deal with
>> this. I am using the SoundMax drivers off the Asus P5E install disk.
>>
>> \Walter
>
> You need to install the audio control program for the SoundMax hardware.
> I'm not familiar with SoundMax, but I believe somewhere on the mobo CD
> their has to be a 'program' to control the SoundMax hardware, perhaps for
> both XP and Vista. Their is a big difference between the 'drivers' and
> the 'control program'. The control program is used to set the speaker
> environment, such as stereo (2), 4, 6, and 8 speaker systems. If you have
> not set this, you will get all types of weird sound problems.
>
> XP and Vista have their own general sound programs, but they usually don't
> get into the particulars of a given sound system setup. That is up to the
> manufacturer of the sound hardware, be it on the mobo or on an add-in
> board. Look for the sound program and install it for both XP and Vista.
> Then set it up as you want it and all should be OK.
>
> William
>

That makes sense and I will install the sound control program into my XP
installation. I am also running Windows Virtual PC 2007 with XP vm's in
there too, and found sound problems after using the vm's. I will install it
into every vm that I run.

But now I'm starting to realize that I might have two separate problems
happening. I think I have a flakey output connector or flakey mini-stereo
jack. When I wiggle things the echo/phasey/hollow, surround channel type
sound goes away and I get the direct L/R signal back. This is one of those
frustrating two-problems-at-the-same-time things. And it explains why
removing the drivers sometimes fixes the problem because throwing the disk
in the drive is slightly shaking the connector.

One thing that I've been doing for years on a range of motherboards is to
take the mini-stereo jack and run it to two phono splitter cables where I
split the signal so that it goes off to Aux inputs on a small home
entertainment center that provides the L/R speakers around my monitors. The
other output from the splitter goes to a cheap headset with microphone for
doing Skype, with the microphone part connected to the MIC out from the
sound card. I'm not sure what sort of problems I am creating driving both
the Aux input and the headset. I probably have some impedance missmatch but
I've not had a problem on the last couple soundcards where I did this.
Maybe the onboard sound card on the P5E doesn't like it -- although the
problem only recently started after using the motherboard like that for five
months.

So for now I have removed the splitter and I'm sending the L/R from the
motherboard's sound card directly to the Aux input of the Home entertainment
center. When I want to do Skype I have to plug in the jack to the connector
on the front of the computer and that shuts of sound to the speakers.
That's okay because I don't do Skype every day but it's a very minor hassle.
I wish there was a way to have both outputs - the rear one on the sound card
and the front one on the case (of course going to the sound card) active.

\Walter