AUDIGY 2 ZS bad CMSS in

Hi There,
) I have the Audigy 2 ZS soundcard
accompanied with Creative Gigaworks S750
speakers (btw. they ROCK!!!). All drivers for
audigy are up to date. I have concerns
regarding the Audigy CMSS function, that
should make the mp3?s sound from ALL of the 7
speakers. The problem is that all the
speakers sound OK except the rears, that have
only about 0% of the volume the other
speakers have (the games work absolutely
properly in surround mode, in EAX for ex).
And the problem is not in the surround mixer,
all the speakers are set to 00%, the rears
too... The CMSS is set to the SECOND option
(makes the best results i think) and the
speaker configuration is set to 7.. And
there is a slider in the right part, by which
you can adjust the FADER, in other words you
can adjust how much volume the front speakers
will have and how much rear. And here is the
problem, when i move the slider down,
naturally the REAR speakers should go louder,
but they remain the same and the SIDE
speakers go louder instead, so there is NO
way to increase the volume of rear speakers
when listening the music (i use winamp 5, if
that matters). All this changes (and works
properly) only when i change the speakers set
to 5. in the THX console, but that has no
use for me (the sides are completely OFF in
that case), as i have 7. speakers and so,
naturally, i want 7. setup. And when you
dont hear the rear speakers, you simply
absolutely dont have the feel of surround
CMSS sound and thats what worries me.
So id like to ask whether you have the same
problem or you know a solution that could
possibly help me or other ppl with such
problem. Thanks in advance!
2) Second question, do you know a program
that uses a microphone to setup your
speakers? That program should create a sound
from each speaker and, using the input from
the microphone, set up the dB values for each
channel i think (for example make rear
speakers louder if they are too far behind).
Because as i know, the manual setup console
that creative labs uses doesnt work as it
resets the values after each restart.
3) Maybe a little off topic, but worth
trying: Do you know a program that can
normalize your mp3 songs (it would be the
best if it had some sort of batch processing,
where you could select a directory and the
program would normalize all the mp3?s in that
directory to a certain level)? Because i want
to get rid of the well known problem: when
you copy some mp3?s to your mp3 player and
play them, some of the songs play a lot
louder, some have relati'vely normal volume
and some play a bit silent on the other
hand... and its impossible to adjust
(normalize) EACH song in some sound editor...
Really thanks in advance for ANY help!!!

The previous post is inaccurate:? CMSS includes many modes, which will work depending on the speaker configuration. This means that CMSS set?to ON on 5. speakers is not the same as CMSS on Headphones. The selection is done automatically, depending on your selected speaker configuration. For example CMSS on headphones uses HRTFs to produce the effect, while on multi-speaker systems it simply maps and pans the sound. From my experience, CMSS works?good on headphones, not only for games, but for music as well. It expands the soundfield, where on simple stereo and headphones you normally hear the sound inside your head. My opinion is, that CMSS sounds much better on headphones than on speaker systems.

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    Message Edited by whander on <SPAN class=date_text>0-23-2005 <SPAN class=time_text>06:26 AM
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    The previous post is inaccurate:? CMSS includes many modes, which will work depending on the speaker configuration. This means that CMSS set?to ON on 5. speakers is not the same as CMSS on Headphones. The selection is done automatically, depending on your selected speaker configuration. For example CMSS on headphones uses HRTFs to produce the effect, while on multi-speaker systems it simply maps and pans the sound. From my experience, CMSS works?good on headphones, not only for games, but for music as well. It expands the soundfield, where on simple stereo and headphones you normally hear the sound inside your head. My opinion is, that CMSS sounds much better on headphones than on speaker systems.

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