Missing Sound Track???

[dr_roberts49]

I recently purchased Creative's Inspire 5.1 5200 speaker system, to replace my blown Altech 4.1 speakers. Here is the rest of my setup:

Pentium III 800 EB
65 Gig Drive space
Windows 98SE
Sony DVD
Sony Burner
512 Meg memory
ViewSonic Ultrabrite A70F+ 17' monitor
DSL, Linksys network with router and WAP (5 computers)
NVIDIA FX 5200, etc., etc.

My sound card is a Hercules Muse 5.1 DVD card, which I've had for about 9 months.

It came with Power DVD XP 4.0 (OEM)
All my drivers are up-to-date and I'm using DirectX 9

I went into control panel, multimedia, and set my speakers to Surround Sound speakers. My mixer software from Muse is also set to 5.1 speakers. All works great in games, and on my DVDs.

Last night, I remembered that I had not changed the settings in Power DVD. It was still set to 4 speakers. Although everything worked fine, I thought I might get even better sound from my DVDs, if I set PowerDVD to 6 speakers. After I made the change, I put in Star Wars Episode I, and I did notice an increase in volume to the music and sounds, BUT when the people spoke, there was no voice track, only the background sounds and music score. I tried several other DVDs, and got the same results. If I checked PowerDVD back to 4 speakers, the overall volume would decrease, but I had the voice tracks back.

I went to the websites for Creative, Hercules, and PowerDVD. I'm registered for all 3 products, and browsed all their FAQs. It was getting late, and I was tired, but I didn't see anything that addressed my particular problem. Creative assumed that you were using only their cards with their speakers, and Hercules had very little to offer. PowerDVD was also lacking.

So, I thought I would turn to my fellow users, and see if anyone else might have experienced a similar situation. I also browsed this section last night, but as I said, it was getting late, so I thought I might just present my situation. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Robert

[dr_roberts49]

Solved my own problem. I was wrong, I did not have the most recent driver for my sound card. I had downloaded it a couple of months ago, but had not installed it. What an idiot! Anyway, all is well. Great improvement on the sound. I wasn't sure I would be completely pleased with these speakers, after my Altec speakers. I just didn't have the funds at the time to get Altecs again, but these look like they will do the job nicely. The center speaker is a nice addition.

Robert