Sonos with Sound Blaster X3

  • 27 December 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 550 views
C

Have the bar sub and two play one’s as surrounds hooked up to a PC with a Sound Blaster X3.  This setup, and one before with a PCI-E card, had worked for years.  I did have trouble getting it working again with Win11 which I installed a month or two ago but got it going again within a day or two. 

But today, after changing inputs from its “TV” input to play some Christmas music yesterday, it isn’t outputting using the surrounds.  Sonos sees the 5.1 Dolby Live input in PC app and on my phone...but still outputs only 2.1.  The one exception I’ve seen is the Netflix Windows app and the Windows “test” for 5.1.  Both of those will output to center and rear speakers but neither games or Netflix/YouTube/Amazon through Chrome browser, none of those work the way they were before.

I’ve factory reset the speakers, reinstalled sound card software/drivers, checked everything I can think of but I’m really stuck.  The fact that Netflix’s app and Windows test is working properly makes me think the issue may be the encoder but the encoder itself says there are no errors when using its troubleshooting and there’s the fact that Sonos recognizes the 5.1 signal...any ideas?

Diagnostics # 1628197476

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6 replies

Ken_Griffiths

If you’re playing audio using a web browser and online services, then might it it be a limitation of the browser software - particularly as the ‘native’ Apps are presumably all playing the surround-audio okay to your playbar setup.

C

I’d been able to hear 5.1 through Chrome before.  I’ll give it a go with Edge or something but I doubt they pushed any changes on Xmas...also wouldn’t explain games not working either.

Ken_Griffiths

I’d been able to hear 5.1 through Chrome before.  I’ll give it a go with Edge or something but I doubt they pushed any changes on Xmas...also wouldn’t explain games not working either.

As it works for other some Apps/sources on the PC, it most likely is going to be the source software - I just can’t see it being a Sonos issue. It’s worth though maybe powering everything off (fully) and ‘On’ again, just to see if that might fix the handshake.

C

Well, mother nature was way ahead of us on the “turning it all off/on”.  Our power has gone out several times in the last 48hrs.  We’re in the PNW and have had a pretty nasty snow storm here. 

But yeah, I’ve tried everything including that.  As I am totally out of ideas, I’ll do a system wipe tomorrow and see if it does anything.

Edit: I did download a program called Passmark Soundcheck and it worked once doing the 3d sound where it lets you create a moving sound source etc.  There’s definitely something screwy with the system or sound card.  I’ll likely put the old pcie card back in before I wipe the system...just to test that but it’s still a tomorrow thing.

C

Definitely seems to be that the X3 just isn’t working right.  Swapped in the old SB Z (pcie sound card) and 5.1 live encoding worked immediately.  Swapped back, nothing.  In contact with Creative for any ideas on troubleshooting it.

Out of curiosity, what are others with a similar setup using?

C

I’m suspecting the cause of the problem with X3 was me disabling “What you hear”.  I’m not sure I did it with the X3 but just now it definitely killed encoding in the Z.  Thankfully I was streaming atm or I might not have figured that out.  Anyway, I was just using disable to hide the long list of outputs/devices I never use...apparently that one is needed. 

I’ll reinstall the X3 tomorrow to confirm.

(Creative hasn’t responded yet)

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