When I built my new rig, the only thing which I was disappointed to find was that the sound from Winamp was horrible. The front speakers were playing well, but the rear speakers filtered frequencies and the result was a very annoying and unpleasant sound. The sound chip used was the on board one which is the Realtek ALC1200 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC. The first thing coming to my mind was that the problem originated from the audio chip on the mainboard and nothing else. I performed the surround sound test using the Asus High Definition Audio control panel which was basically the Realtek control panel and all the speakers played well, which was weird because winamp was not outputting the required sound. Then I found that the problem lied elsewhere when I realised that all speakers were playing as they should with Need for Speed Shift. I also noticed that DSPs were not working with winamp more specifically the Simply Surround and Nullsoft Signal Processing Studio DSPs. The solution was not an easy one as I had to find out why the dsp was not working.
The identified reasons was as follows:
- Windows 7
- My sound chip
- Winamp
I then tested Winamp with the same dsp on Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 on a Dell Optiplex 360 not paying attention to the Winamp version that I installed on it. Surprisingly, the dsp worked. The first two reasons was easily ruled out. If the dsp worked with Vista, it should be able to do the same with Windows 7. I could not be my sound chip because NFS Shift played well on it. The 3rd reason was the most unimaginable one. How on earth could a dsp that worked on a
major version 5 of winamp not work on another same major version. This is what I discovered when I replaced the version 5.56 with 5.5. The
Simply Surround DSP that did not work with Winamp 5.56 worked flawlessly with version 5.5 on my rig with Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.
When the DSP problem was solved, several more tuning had to be done to obtain the best output on all speakers because enabling the dsp alone permitted only the front speakers to play with a stereo mp3. This was because I uninstalled the Realtek driver and let Windows 7 install what it could find from the internet. The Realtek driver that came with the support DVD played stereo sound on all speakers with the option Speaker Fill enabled. I can't figure out why the windows audio configuration with the Speaker Fill enabled did not play stereo sound on all speakers. This is how it was done so that stereo mp3 on winamp played on all speakers:
Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage audio devices > Select the active speakers where there is the green tick > Properties > Enhancements > Check Speaker Fill and Channel Phantoming.
Click on Preview several times. Chimes should be heard. Play something on Winamp. If surround sound fails, click on Preview again until Winamp plays on all speakers. The method described to play on surround speakers was concocted.
There was one more thing to do: Correction of sound delay. Windows already has an automated program to do that with the help of a microphone.
Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage audio devices > Select the active speakers > Properties> Enhancements > Check Room Correction and select it. Click on Settings... below.
Windows should now present you with the Room Calibration program. Before proceeding with the room calibration, make sure that your speaker setup matches that of windows. (Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage audio devices > Select the active speakers > Configure) Follow the instructions and enjoy listening your music with Winamp.
