Looking for some parts

[bernardosgr]

Hi everyone, I'm currently having an issue with my sound setup. I have a 5.1 sound system and I had windows 7 installed a few weeks ago, before I had XP. The problem is the following: with XP all my speakers worked, I got sound on all 5 speakers and, more importantly on the subwoofer, even with songs that weren't 5.1 compatible, its like that sound was the same on some of the speakers, but I wanted that... Then I installed Windows 7 and I only get sound on 2 speakers and, worst of all no subwoofer... I was told that getting a sound card would fix my problem so I am looking for suggestions on a fairly good and fairly cheap sound card (I've looked for one but my search was inconclusive)

The other thing is that I'm using wireless internet from the router that I have located on my living-room... I have a D-Link DWL-G122 connected to my PC that gets a really crapy signal (three bars out of five) and I would like to get a better one, since I have a nice connection. What wireless net cards would you recomend, what specs should I look for in one?

Thank you all

[saebrtooth]

how much are you willing to spend?

[Sazzy]

I was told that getting a sound card would fix my problem so I am looking for suggestions on a fairly good and fairly cheap sound card (I've looked for one but my search was inconclusive)

I've had the same issue and after some research I found out the following:

Unlike Windows XP, Windows 7 only uses the speakers that the file you're playing actually has sound for. So if you're playing stereo, the speakers will act like stereo and the backspeakers etc won't play. If you play some AC3 5.1 file, you'll notice that the speakers will play. Getting a sound card won't fix this, as this will happen too, being a Windows 7 "feature" (or some might even call it a bug). However, ms has a native option to get it back to how Windows XP worked. You can enable this by going to the sound panel, selecting your speakers in the playback tab -> click properties -> go to the enhancements tab -> enable speaker fill -> click apply -> click ok -> click ok.

When you play a stereo file, speaker fill will automatically extract sound with some fancy algorithms from the file and play it on the speakers that currently don't have any sound. For instance, when watching a stereo movie, it will filter the voices from the sound and play the leftover sound on the back speakers. Don't worry, this sounds better than you'd expect.

The other thing is that I'm using wireless internet from the router that I have located on my living-room... I have a D-Link DWL-G122 connected to my PC that gets a really crapy signal (three bars out of five) and I would like to get a better one, since I have a nice connection. What wireless net cards would you recomend, what specs should I look for in one?

I would try to find out first if the router in your living room is sending out a strong enough signal. Getter a better card for in your pc while the signal from the living room is too weak, will not solve anything. So be sure it's the card in your pc that's the bad component.

I recently bought a new router myself (n compatible) and noticed the bars going up on all my devices.

[bernardosgr]

@saebrtooth I would say about 20-25 euros per each card since I'm not looking for something very good but for a simple way out.

@Sazzy Thanks for the help with the sound issue, I've donne that and it got all the speakers playing but not the subwoofer... About the net signal issue, how do I proceed to verifty the intensity of the router's signal.