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It even says in the manual there is a front, surround, and center/sub jack on the card. My center works.
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I know what it says in the manual. I read mine over 50 times trying to get the damn thing to work, and it never did. I would be able to hook up front left/right & rear left/right OR I would be able to hook up front left/right & center/sub but never all three things at the same time, because it just wouldn't work.
At the time I tried all of this, I was using the creative software & drivers that came with the 5.1 card in Windows ME.
What I have done now, is formatted my computer, and instead of installing Windows ME, I am now using Windows XP (Professional).
Next, I did NOT install any of the creative drivers or software that came with the card. Instead, I let Windows XP find my card and use it's own drivers for it.
Then I went into the "Sound & Audio Devices" in the Control Panel. Went to "Advanced" and clicked on "Digital Output Only." Then closed the "Advanced" screen and clicked on the "Advanced Screen" of "Speaker Settings." I selected the option that I have 5.1 Surround Sound speakers.
THEN, I installed POWER DVD 5 and in the sound settings selected "USE SPDIF."
And whenever I play a DVD, it shows up as true 5.1 on my receiver. And, I even put it "Digital Video Essentials" to calibrate my receiver to the 5.1 sound output of the card, and it just so happened to be perfectly calibrated already (all speakers set to 75dB) from when calibrated the sound using my regular Sony DVD player (stand-alone player).
The bass is there, everything is there. You can hear all 5 speakers discretely, as well as the sub, just as you would if you had hooked up your regular DVD player to your receiver using a digital output such as Coax.
If you have done all of the above, then it should work perfectly for you. The only other thing I can think of, is that you might not be using the right cables going from the card, into the receiver. You'll need a 1/8th mini cord, that turns into an RCA at the other side of the cable. You plug the single RCA into the back of your receiver "Digital Input" and set one of your sources to use that input.
For example, on my receiver, since I don't have a receiver that says "Computer" on it, I used use a source I wasn't using at all. The one I used was "Satellite" since I don't have Satellite. Then I went into the receivers settings, and told it to use "Digital Coax Input 2" which is where I connected the cable running from the card into the receiver. "Digital Coax Input 1" is what I use for my regular DVD player.
So whenever I play a DVD from my computer, I just switch the receiver to "Satellite" and it starts playing the DVD with 5.1. And when a DVD is stereo only, it'll show up on my receiver as 2.0. It truly works.
I hope this helps....at least a little bit. It took me years (literally) to figure out how to make the damn card work properly.
