Is there a way to permanently change 5.1 surround to stereo in windows?

Happy Hopping

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I came across something strange w/ CNN.com. The default of the playback mode is 5.1 surround, and it has been like that for years

I can play any video at youtube & CNN just fine. But w/ CNN, as of the other day, it will play its commercial when I view their video, but after that, there is no audio. So the same video, the commerical portion has sound, the content of the video has no sound.

As soon as I change it to stereo from 5.1, I got the sound back. This only happens at CNN.com

but the next time I turn on the PC, I have to do it again. Shouldn't there be a way to save the setting?

and how on earth can their website detect and play their commerical to me, and yet doesn't know how to play the video w/ audio?
 
How can you avoid CNN commerical prior to the airing of their video, it's on their own
 
This is hard to comment on without knowing how your Sound settings are set in the Windows Control Panel. If you open up the Sound app, click on your Playback device, and then go through the Properties for that device. Check the Box for Disable All Enhancements, and make sure Spatial Sound is turned Off. Make sure the Advanced, Default Format is set to a 2 channel format. Other than that, you'll have to provide more information on the browser or other software you're using to play the website files and the type of sound devices you're using.
 
we must be using 2 different ver. of windows. As in my windows 7, under advance, I only have "Enable audio enhancements" and I just turn it OFF

As to the other things you mention, I don't see it. like "Spatial sound' "2 chnl. format", the default quality breaks down to

Studio Quality
Cd quality
DVD quality

and they range from 16 to 24 bit

--------------

as to browser, the same problem w/ Chrome and firefox quantum
 
do you have a link to the video you're facing this issue on?
i have a 5.1 setup and able to test this out.
 
This raises the question--what type of sound card or chip do you have, and what is the source of your sound driver? Is this a third party add-in sound driver? Perhaps your software is set up to simulate surround sound from certain sources, and the CNN playback activates it. Since Windows 7 does not natively support surround sound, you have to have added some software supporting it at some point, and that added software is probably causing the problem.
 
This is hard to comment on without knowing how your Sound settings are set in the Windows Control Panel. If you open up the Sound app, click on your Playback device, and then go through the Properties for that device. Check the Box for Disable All Enhancements, and make sure Spatial Sound is turned Off. Make sure the Advanced, Default Format is set to a 2 channel format. Other than that, you'll have to provide more information on the browser or other software you're using to play the website files and the type of sound devices you're using.

by disabling "Enable audio enhancements", it does NOT work. Tonight, I click this video (none of the video works), the commercial plays the audio just fine, but as soon as we get to the contents, there is no sound.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/05/asia/thai-cave-diver-intl/index.html

now, about several years ago, I installed a Asus 650 GTX Ti, in which a HDMI cable is connected to my Yamaha 5.1 receiver from the HDMI port that I have at the back of the video card, and this effectively gives me 6 + 2 speakers. Somehow, w/o touching anything, about 2 years ago, there is no more sound on the HDMI port (HDMI 2)

So say I switch to HDMI 2 and watch a youtube video today, the sound will come out of the 2 speakers, but no sound from those 6 speakers

I think this is the reaon that I have 5.1 on the playback device

the question is, how do you fix it?
 
OK, I played the link and I also downloaded it to examine the file format. First, there needs to be a clear understanding that there is no "real" surround sound involved here. There is video in standard mp4 format and the CNN video itself only contains a single mono sound channel. The commercial, in my case I got Subaru ad, has standard 2 channel stereo audio. Any output to your speakers is being managed by whatever ASUS software you downloaded or installed with your video card. The software in synthesizing surround sound by routing the original mono or stereo sound track to all of your speakers. So if anythings not working, its the ASUS software. You could try downloading a fresh driver, I see one dated 1/21/18, uninstalling the old driver as completely as possible, and then installing the new driver. Or you could try Nvidia's website and download their driver, which appears to be newer. But its not clear how any of these drivers effect synthesizing fake surround sound. So whatever problem you're having you may have to call ASUS. Otherwise you'll have to be happy with whatever audio you're getting out of your speakers, since there's only really one or two channels to start with.
 
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I got no ads on that page - but then again I use adblock.
 
I got no ads on that page - but then again I use adblock.

I watched it with ad blocking off since he said he was having a problem where he could hear the ad sound but not the CNN sound. Since the ads are in stereo and CNN is in mono, maybe his software couldn't handle changing from stereo to mono in a continuous stream. Since his software is trying to fake surround sound by routing either the mono or stereo to all of his speakers, its clearly his software's problem. But not having that video card with ASUS software its hard to tell what the software is doing to the audio when its faking surround sound so its hard to figure out how it got broken and doesn't work consistently.
 
As soon as I change it to stereo from 5.1, I got the sound back. This only happens at CNN.com
It's probably just blindly routing left to front-left/rear-left and same for right, which means ignoring mono?
I get the same thing with mono youtube videos (at least on their video player).
 
The sound card is not Asus. The video card is Asus where the HDMI goes. But the sound card is Sound Blaster ZxR by Creative Labs

I can try the embedded sound card tonight and see what happens.

But knowing so, I can't understand why it only happens to CNN. And I'm not the only one:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2248713
 
The sound card is not Asus. The video card is Asus where the HDMI goes. But the sound card is Sound Blaster ZxR by Creative Labs

I can try the embedded sound card tonight and see what happens.

But knowing so, I can't understand why it only happens to CNN. And I'm not the only one:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2248713

Maybe its the way CNN creates its single mono sound channel. Since you said you could hear the commercial, which is in standard 2 channel stereo, it must have something to do with the mono creation process. I will download the video file again and examine rhe audio further. Maybe its the bitrate its encoded at. Meanwhile you could go through all of the settings in your Sound Blaster ZXR control app to see it there are any clues there as to what its doing when it fakes surround sound from a mono source.
 
OK, so I looked at these files again. There are basically 2 differences between the commercials that you said you could hear normally and the CNN video. The commercials (at least the Subaru one) have a video framerate of 23.976 while the CNN video has a framerate of 29.97. So your software setup has to be able to handle a change in video framerate on the fly as its streaming. The audio format also changes from the 48,000 Hz stereo used in the commercial to the 44,100 Hz mono format used in the CNN video and both are 16 bit formats. Your software also has to be able to handle this format change on the fly as the audio streams from one format to the other. Since these are all standard formats, I can't see any obvious reason why you and others can't hear both formats. I don't think it has anything to do with flash since its just standard mono, but that's just me. Perhaps its more a Windows 7 problem where all of the audio is handled by third party software provided by the audio card mfg. or if I remember correctly, the HDMI audtio is sometimes provided by a driver from the video card mfg., at least it was back in the days when I was using an AMD 5400 video card (or was it 4500 card). Perhaps after you go through all of the settings in the Sound Blaster ZXR control panel, especially as they relate to handling mono sound and routing it to the speakers, your problems will be resolved.
 
The sound card is not Asus. The video card is Asus where the HDMI goes. But the sound card is Sound Blaster ZxR by Creative Labs

I can try the embedded sound card tonight and see what happens.

But knowing so, I can't understand why it only happens to CNN. And I'm not the only one:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2248713

Since you added the information that you have a Sound Blaster ZXR card, perhaps all of your problems would be solved in you used the card's optical spdif output to connect to your receiver. You would still have to check the ZXR's control panel to make sure that its set for 5.1 speakers and that all of the speakers are checkmarked as being present. But if that default is set properly, all your sound output should work correctly.
 
Since you added the information that you have a Sound Blaster ZXR card, perhaps all of your problems would be solved in you used the card's optical spdif output to connect to your receiver. You would still have to check the ZXR's control panel to make sure that its set for 5.1 speakers and that all of the speakers are checkmarked as being present. But if that default is set properly, all your sound output should work correctly.

Or just block the damn ads and this and many other problems are gone.
 
There is something else that I remember: I am having this problem at firefox quantum when I make this post. But going back a year, this problem has occur in Chrome. So I just assume it's bad programming by chrome, as IE 11 and Firefox can play the sound file just fine back then.

Anyhoo, here's an update: by using the motherboard embedded green sound port, I can play those CNN video, as it is default to Stereo Sound, although it also gives me Quadraphonic, 5.1 and 7.1

The Sound blastter is default to 5.1, but as I said earlier, somehow it can play youtube, CNN all these years.

so it looks like CNN must have change something lately, or there is a bug in the sound card driver.
 
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