2 Appendix A – Surround Sound Playback and Recording Driver
14
Limitations
• It appears that multi-channel hardware peak meters are not yet properly
supported in Windows. The 8-channel input and output subdevices
therefore don’t have peak meter nodes, with Windows instead creating
software peak meters. The recording software peak meter however is
disabled when the input is opened by an application in ‘exclusive mode’.
• Microsoft are inconsistent in their mapping of 5.1 content onto 7.1
output devices, with Windows Media Player in particular not following
their defined mapping and using the rear speakers instead of the side
speakers.
• Windows will always name a speaker endpoint as “Speakers”, with the
driver unable to override this.
• Windows will try to make a speaker endpoint the default playback
device. This can be manually overridden if need be, but any driver update
will undo this.