My system is currently using 4 speakers, connected to the front and rear ports on my sound card. I like getting a "full" sound from my stereo music, so I have "Speaker Fill" enabled in the Realtek Audio control panel. I don't like opening the panel a lot, so I just leave Speaker Fill enabled all the time.
When I play games that support surround sound, I can hear sound coming out of the rear speakers, but I am wondering if this is the same sound coming from the front speakers? Basically, when I have Speaker Fill enabled, does it still use all surround sound audio channels, or does it continue just mirroring what the front speaker outputs?Well, it seems that you can't tell by listening to it. Or can you?
The surround sound concept has to do with the way people perceive sounds. And this is where we could get into a long discussion about to perception and reality.

In theory, if you had a pair of headphones on your head, and if your head was held in a vise so the head couldn't move, and if you are not allowed to look around and see what's behind you, then you might perceive that sounds are coming from behind you or in front of you with just a pair of earphones that have only two transducers. That's because you only have two ears. As to why we need to have four loudspeakers to reproduce spatula sound -- that is going way beyond the general tone of this website.
Read your documentation very carefully. It should explain that when you force the fill sound on all the time it just copies whatever is on the front speakers to the back speakers. Or attempts to do some sort of matrix transferr and put some kind of filtering on the back speakers. If you want real four channel sound, you have to have for actual channels. This makes more sense in a large Auditorium or theater where people need to have separate sound sources to create the illusion of special sound. But if they all wore headphones, and they didn't move their HEADS, only two transducers would be needed.It sounds to me that it would mirror it. Try turning it off and see what happens It took some testing, but I think Speaker Fill does mirror sounds no MATTER what the sound coming through is. Oh well, it doesn't make that much of a difference, right Geek-9pm?Yes, not much difference.
What we're discussing here is some the effectiveness of of reproducing sound in a small space in giving the human hearing the sensation in a being in open area.
If you have high quality speakers, and in a small room with good sound characteristics, you'll enjoy the surround sound when it's available. But this is mostly effective while watching a high-quality television presentation or in PLAYING in very well done computer game.
Earlier in it was already mentioned, this is more important in a theater because of a large space is more difficult to give people a sense of true sound unless you have lots of loudspeakers. In in a large area, like a movie theater, our ears can tell if the sound is coming from just one loudspeaker or if it's coming from two separate loudspeakers. When it gets the point of about 5 channel sound, the human ear starts to a perceive sounds being the somewhere ins the space between the loudspeakers.

Below here is a good reference. Good, yes, but not absolutely true in every respect. Still, it is a good place to start in which to learn more. There you can find more links that take you to other sites that relates to this idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital
But, for instance, when you are in your sound control panel, or something, and there is the diagram with all the speakers, and it plays a tone out of each one, the front left will play even though it is the rear left, and vise verse. The same thing will be in a game. People moving will be coming from everywherecomputeruler,
Tomorrow you assignment is to read the link I posted five times.
Then later come back here for a POP quiz on Monday.
speaker fill just mirrors the sound, Dolby digital does notQuote from: computeruler on December 25, 2009, 08:46:45 PM

speaker fill just mirrors the sound, Dolby digital does not