Sound from front speakers only

Hi there guys!

I've recently installed Win 7 64 bit and I'm having troubles playing sound through all my speakers. I have a Gigabyte Mobo using Realtek 7.1 audio chip. I downloaded the Win 7 x64 drivers from the motherboard website including the sound drivers. When playing any music of video, I can only hear it through the front two speakers only.

I have the realtek audio manager and I can test the speaker configuration and it's fine. The test sound plays on each speaker, but i don't understand why Win 7 is only playing it through 2? I am using Windows Media Player to play music.

I've looked around for a solution but I couldn't find one. I've gone to the control panel > sound > and made sure that 7.1 was set.

Is there anything more I can do to get it to work?

Any help would be gratefully recieived.

Sometimes MP3's and music files will only play through the front channels, as they are only recorded in stereo. You can often force playback through all speakers though (have you tried the "Speaker fill" option in the realtek panel?).

In another thread, Nibiru2012 suggested running another media player called AIMP2 which solved a similar problem : Only front speakers work on 5.1 in Windows 7

You can download AIMP2 from here: http://www.aimp.ru/index.php?do=download

I can guarantee that you'll like this way better that Windows Media Player!

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