getting surround sound working

ADS

I'm having trouble getting surround sound working.
I just built a new computer with parts from Microcenter.  My motherboard is the ASRock B550M Pro4:
https://www.microcenter.com/product/625305/asrock-b550m-pro4-amd-am4-matx-motherboard
It supports 7.1 surround sound, according to the product page, and 5.1 surround sound as well according to the motherboard manual:
https://download.asrock.com/Manual/B550M Pro4.pdf
But how do I configure it?
I tried to test it with two mismatched pairs of speakers (before I go buy a full 5.1 system).  I plugged the two sets of speakers into the green and blue audio jacks on the motherboard.  I then went into the Win10 Sound Settings > Sound Control Panel > Speakers > Configure, and selected "Quadraphonic".  When I "Test" the speakers in this menu I can hear sound from all 4 speakers, front and rear.  But I cannot hear sound from the "rear" speakers when I play audio from any other source, including YouTube videos that are meants to test 5.1 surround sound.
What can I do to make surround sound work?
Thanks for your help.

TSTonyV

In the sound control panel, go into properties > spatial sound. There's a dropdown menu you can use to enable spatial sound settings. If you select the Dolby option it will prompt you to download the Dolby app from the Microsoft Store, you should also have a Windows Sonic option. Try those first and see if that gets it working. 

ADS

Thanks for your suggestion.
I only see two options there, under Properties > Spatial Sound: "Off" and "Windows Sonic for Headphones".  Should there be a Dolby option?  How would I get a Dolby option to appear there?

TSTonyV

I was always under the impression that Dolby would usually show up there, but I guess it might not always be? Have you made sure to download the audio drivers from ASRock's website for your motherboard? 

ADS

I previously installed the audio driver from ASRock's website for my motherboard.  I just reinstalled the driver, and there was no change.  The available Spatial Sound settings are still "Off" and "Windows Sonic for Headphones."  
Are there other options that I may need to change in order to get more options here?
For example, under the Advanced tab I changed the sample rate and bit depth, according to the suggestion of a forum.  It was originally "24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)" by default; I changed it to "24 bit, 96000 Hz (Studio Quality)."  This had no effect either.
To reiterate: I am hearing sound from all 4 speakers, but only when I use the Win10 "Test" function.  I haven't heard sound from the rear speakers in any other context.
Thanks for any further suggestions you have!

AlexS

ADS said:

I previously installed the audio driver from ASRock's website for my motherboard.  I just reinstalled the driver, and there was no change.  The available Spatial Sound settings are still "Off" and "Windows Sonic for Headphones."  
Are there other options that I may need to change in order to get more options here?
For example, under the Advanced tab I changed the sample rate and bit depth, according to the suggestion of a forum.  It was originally "24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)" by default; I changed it to "24 bit, 96000 Hz (Studio Quality)."  This had no effect either.
To reiterate: I am hearing sound from all 4 speakers, but only when I use the Win10 "Test" function.  I haven't heard sound from the rear speakers in any other context.
Thanks for any further suggestions you have!

I was looking into this motherboard and I do see it uses RealTek Audio.  Do you happen to have the RealTek Audio Manager installed?  The easiest way to access it if you go to the hidden icons and check for the red speaker icon.  From there, you may be able to see if you can tap into the rear speakers if available.

ADS

As far as I can tell, I don't have RealTek Audio Manager.
If you would like me to test something in RealTek Audio Console, please tell me where I can obtain it (somewhere on RealTek's website?), and please tell me what I should test.
In the meantime, I do have RealTek Audio Console, per this screenshot:
If I press the "Play" button (the one positioned in the middle of the speakers) to test the speakers, I get sound from each of the 4 speakers sequentially.  This works, much as the Win10 Sound Configuration Test worked. (I mentioned my Win10 test in my original post.)
The problem is that I don't *usually* hear anything from the rear speakers under non-test conditions.  There is one exception to that so far. I went to this Youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL9-sIZRDHg
and downloaded the linked "original file":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nYAKUiVpepY1NuQW5ER3l3SXc/edit
When I play this file in VLC, I do hear sound from the rear speakers.  This is still a "test" of sorts, but at least it's driven by a real media file through VLC, rather than a component of Win10 or RealTek Audio Console.

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding on my part.  Under what conditions should sound actually be played from the rear speakers?  I assumed that if I configured the audio driver for Quadraphonic or 5.1 sound then it (the driver) would automatically convert stereo sound (played via any program, like VLC, Winamp, etc.) into "emulated" Quadraphonic or "emulated" 5.1 sound, to play *something* from the rear speakers.  Is this not the case?  Should I only expect sound from the rear speakers when the original audio was encoded with 5.1 sound?

Thanks for your continued help.

TSTonyV

Most music is played in stereo, as well as YouTube videos. DVDs/movies or other TV streaming like Netflix will aalso typically be in surround. This sounds like it's probably an issue with the source media just not supporting surround. 

That said, Dolby Atmos and Windows Sonic are supposed to simulate surround sound as far as I understand them. Do you have that Windows Sonic setting currently enabled? Clearly your speakers are working properly, so it's something with the media and/or Windows.