p370em audio problem

hi,
i need some help setting up my audio.. id like to post on creatives forums but dont have permisions yet.
i have the above clevo ,with xfi mb2 and thx pro studio.
my problem is i dont like the sound i get with optical ..to me it sounds terrible so i dont use it.
so instead for music im upmixing my audio to a pioneer receiver via 3 jack cables in the following way

center cable to line in
rear speaker cable to spdif out
front speaker to headphone

this is set to 7.1 in realtek audio manager ..its the only way to get it to work..even though i have a 5.1 setup
if i set realtek hd manager to 5.1 and plug it in that way it doesnt work right , and i get all kinds of distortion and with both 5.1 and 7.1 ..you cant set up the cables the way the laptop instruction manual says to ..
realtek sets up the lines different to how the manaul specifies??? its freakn stupid , i paid 3k for this and some idiot couldnt get the audio right..anyway... what im saying is
you try and set it up the way the manual says but it wont work ..
real teck audio sets it up its own way. ie centre is meant to go into mic jack.. it doesnt ,realtek only allows it to work as centre to line in...thats one example..
so once ive set it up the only way that is possible... it still sounds like crap...
most of the volume and quality goes to the centre
while the rear or side and front speakers have very little volume and its distorted...
my question is what the fark is going on ?? lol i use lossless audio yeh its 2 channel i know but i wanna upmix it through 5.1
i use to do this with my azuntech sound card , it also had a soundblaster console
to control each channel.. the difference is that the azuntech worked perfectly , each channel had perfecct volume and sound with no distortion..now its horrible. please help ????
EDIT * one thing i discovered is if you turn of surround on the thx pro studio module.. the sound goes to stereo ?? this is weird considering its connected via multichannel and my receiver should be managing the sound not thx studio..any other audio management software i can use thats good for upmixing??

 

So on the P370EM the center/sub goes to Line-in? Looks like they have changed the layout. Now I don't even bother upmixing except songs as THX surround does make it sound distorted. As a result if the source is stereo then the output will be stereo, if the source is 5.1 then the output will be 5.1. All I enable now is just the Crystalizer (84%) and speaker (90Hz) in 5.1 mode, full-range speakers off for front left/right and surround speakers in Realtek panel, and upmix songs using matrix mixer in Foobar2000, of course songs have to be played through Foobar2000.

 

No, centre sub is meant to go in mic jack out.. but , mic jack wont accept centre sub...only line in accepts centre sub for some weird reason... its all wrong , i cant set it up how the manual says.. it just doesnt accept it that way...
i might uninstall thx and xfi garbage.. its a piece of crap.. i feel sorry for people who payed for it.. ill just use realtek and find some third party software to manage the upmixing , maybe a winamp plugin or something... the annoying thing is my auzentech card did it all perfectly using an older version of soundblaster ....but theres no way of using that version of soundblaster with this laptop... and i still dont get why thx pro studio is managing the sound instead of my reciever..the whole idea of having multichannel setup is to allow your receiver to manage the sound isnt it?

 

Did you double click on each of these to make sure all output are correctly selected?

Spoiler

 

strange as i just plugged my 5.1 plugs into the 3 sockets and they work fine. tried a variation of the black,yellow,green plugs in each and they all work with no distortion at all.
at work now so will check again when i get home.

 

do u mean double click the speakers to see if sound was coming through in the correct channels? if so yeh i did.. funny thing is sound test sounds good .. its the music going through all the xfi crap that turns distorted .. its freakn horrible... cant even listen to half a song like this.
also , the jack inputs are all wrong according to the manual ,

 

one strange thing to is it says to connect front speaker cable to headphone and ive tested it its the only way that front speaker will work.. thing is no popup dialog comes up when i plug it in to headphones... if you dont mind can you tell me what cables do you connect to what socket ?
ie front speaker cable to headphone etc

 

There won't be any pop up dialogs for the front speaker as the stereo jack only outputs stereo, my front speakers/stereo headphone are connected to the stereo socket. Center/Sub cable to Mic-in socket, rear speakers cable to Line-in socket. Surround speakers cable to S/PDIF-Out socket.

Did you try turning THX and Xfi off and enable the features in each of them one by one to find out what's giving you distorted sound?

 

Edit: actually I mean the 4 jack icons in the red rectangle.

 

yeh i did that , there still not correct.. see how you have centre speaker into mic jack?? that wont work for me, mic jack comes up as rear speaker for some reason..and if i do use centre for it , it will have no sound...
yes i did turn off thx settings and trouble shooted each one ... didnt make much of a difference.. eax can control channel volume to some extent but still sounds terrible...its almost like one of the volume controls are wayy too high.. and the output is too high for the speakers..but ive checked every main volume possible, in windows , realtek, thx , xfi.. on my receiver .. i dont know where else to look

 

Did you try the option "Swap center / subwoofer output" and see if you get something on your center channel? If you have already tried then it sounds like something is wrong with your realtek driver or the audio source is stereo. Might want to give version Realtek driver R2.70 a try, working pretty good on mine at the moment: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

Edit: if you go to playback devices, double click on speaker and bring up its properties you should be able to find Levels among those tabs, there you can control the volume for each channel.

Spoiler

 

yeh i tried swap centre /sub..all it does is output sub to your centre channel and centre to your sub channel..its silly , not even sure why its there if thats all it does lol ...im currently using R2.70.. thanks anyway , ill try and find some other software that might do the job instead of thx stuff.

 

Well it appears that some speakers' cen/sub cable has the center and the sub reversed and yes it does look silly when I first saw that.

 

ok i give up lol i uninstalled thx and xfi etc ... im going to plug it all in now see how it sounds without it .. then if ok ill download a plugin for winamp to manage speakers or some software..