No sound with Realtek ALC850 on Abit AV8 S/PDIF and Vista 32-bit

I just loaded Home Premium from scratch. It seems that I get no sound with
the Microsoft-supplied drivers, even though I ran the upgrade advisor and it
said the audio would be supported (not totally true). I loaded the 6213
drivers from Realtek, and I can get dolby digital audio when I play DVDs, but
no system sounds, or sounds when I play mp3s.

I got the following email back from Realtek, which really doesn't make any
sense:
Hi,
I'm sorry .
Our driver doesn't support "Dolby Digital" function for your
motherboard .
Because this is required by your motherboard manufacturer .
This function was supported by Dolby licence .
You can try to play sound with PowerDVD or WinDVD ( support Dolby
digital ) .

Regards
PC-Tech

Also, I have a plantronics dsp-400 headset, which works fine.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Jason Luros wrote:
> I just loaded Home Premium from scratch. It seems that I get no sound with
> the Microsoft-supplied drivers, even though I ran the upgrade advisor and it
> said the audio would be supported (not totally true). I loaded the 6213
> drivers from Realtek, and I can get dolby digital audio when I play DVDs, but
> no system sounds, or sounds when I play mp3s.
>
> I got the following email back from Realtek, which really doesn't make any
> sense:
> Hi,
> I'm sorry .
> Our driver doesn't support "Dolby Digital" function for your
> motherboard .
> Because this is required by your motherboard manufacturer .
> This function was supported by Dolby licence .
> You can try to play sound with PowerDVD or WinDVD ( support Dolby
> digital ) .
>
> Regards
> PC-Tech
>
> Also, I have a plantronics dsp-400 headset, which works fine.
>
> Any thoughts or suggestions?

6213_Vista_APO is the file name that I downloaded from Realtek. It
seems fine on my identical board, with Vista Business. The sound chip
is installed as "Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller" in
Device Manager.

I think you should disable Dolby Digital completely, and see how it
sounds with normal stereo.

Regards,

Tom

Well, that's the file I used too. I am able to get analog sound off the RCA
ports, and dolby digital on the spdif out port, but not analog audio encoded
to PCM on the spdif out.