I thought that would be the issue too, but that's not the case. I've noticed the only way to fix the problem was to turn off hardware acceleration for directsound, so I got a plugin...

I've been experiencing this problem as well with 5.1 speakers and an Creative X-FI card. Everything only plays through the center channel. Regardless is the file is mono, or stereo. Everything else past 3DGS works just fine. I do not understand why we would have to turn off hardware acceleration? Is this a Directsound problem or A7 problem? As in the directxdiag all the tests of audio work just fine, but they do not work in A7.

I turned off hardware acceleration in the DirectX diag, and now it plays through all speakers but it's stuttering, songs start and stop, everythings messed up, and what works doesn't sound as good. I am also wondering if there is a speed decrease because of this "emulated" sound... I'm not really certain on what to do here?

I've also read that Vista doesn't have user options to turn off hardware acceleration. Does this mean 3dgs won't work properly with creative cards on Vista?