Subwoofer issue with NForce2 board

[Corwin]

My setup is the following:


Athlon XP 2000+
Windows XP SP1
Epox 8RDA+ with latest NVIDIA drivers (4.27 I believe)
Altec Lansing VS3151 5.1 speakers


I have the following baffling problem:

The speakers are all connected fine. The tests performed by the speaker setup under Soundstorm (and later NVmixer) are fine. The problem I have that the green/red bar for the Subwoofer in the VU meter under NVmixer never appears EXCEPT when I run the setup in which case it's fine, a green/red bar shows up.

If I play a movie or an mp3, the other bars show up fine but the one for the subwoofer stays dead.

NVSWAP "sees" (i.e. projects static into it) the center speaker but not the subwoofer.

Are there any other utils I can use to test the setup? The subwoofer seems to be projecting bass even when the VU meter bar is dead but it is hard to tell. I thought about trying the speakers on another machine but the Soundmax ones here at work do not have the same util for seeing the sound output, just a simple setup similar to the soundstorm/nvmixer.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Tazmanian Engr]

Double click on the nvidia icon in the quick launch bar on bottom right of your desk. Left click on the speaker setup tab. Left click on the surround settings. left click on the enable subwoofer box. Set your crossover frequency to a desired frequency. Mine is set to 120 to 250Hz, depending on the music playing. Click Ok. That should get it. Post and let me know how it goes.

[Corwin]

Thanks a lot.

Although there is no "enable subwoofer box" (at least in the NVmixer version 4.27), once I clicked on "Enable LFE crossover frequency", the subwoofer miraculously appeared in the VU Meters. I read up on the function on the net but I am still a bit in the dark as to why I needed to enable that function with my specific set of speakers.

Thanks again.

[Tazmanian Engr]

LFE=low fequency enclosure, I guess I should have given you the right term but I was bouncing back from one comp to another when I did the post, sorry. My guess as to why you have to enable it is that the software is setup to only send a signal to the subwoofer when it crossover frequency (the highest frequency sent to the sub and the lowest frequency sent to the mains) is set. Otherwise, all frequencies are sent to the main channels. Glad it got u fixed up though.

[IAmGhostDog]

Glad you sorted it out.
Thanks to Tazmanian Engr.
Gonna mark as resolved.