Realtek Sound and 2.1 Speakers

I wouldn't call myself an "audiofile" by any means but I do appreciate decent 2.1 sound on my computer setup through a set of Klipsch Pro Media speakers. I recently noticed that they weren't sounding quite as good as they had in the past and as I'd taken my who desk apart and rewired everything I thought it might be a good idea to check into the issue. If you remember back to the XP days there used to be several speaker configurations in windows sounds settings. Everything from headphones, quadrophonic, laptop speakers, stereo and stereo with subwoofer. Now I wasn't appearing to get the good old bass level I had previously, so I was starting to worry about my subwoofer's health. When I looked at the settings in my Realtek drivers it is limited to stereo, quad, 5.1 or 7.1. There isn't a reference to 2.1. This intrigued me.

Now I just assumed that because the setting said stereo that the audio drivers would output everything down those stereo channels and then my 2.1 system could separate the bass from the signal. Well this didn't appear to be true. No matter how I tried it I could not get the subwoofer to woof... at all. Of course I looked at the sound properties in the windows system and there (even with stereo selected) it shows the subwoofer channel routed to a different output plug.

This immediately led me off to Google to look for more info and a solution. Needless to say I wasn't the only person with the issue, and while there were lots of solutions listed online none appeared to work correctly. I even tried setting the rear front speaker output to headphones in the hope they at least output all the frequencies to headphones. Well that didn't work either. I looked in the registry for anything which might be a solution but nothing. Finally I found a posting where someone took a common sense approach to the problem. They recommended getting a 2 x male 3.5mm stereo to male 3.5mm stereo adapter, like the one below.

This should combine the analog subwoofer and front stereo speaker outputs back together and let the Klipsch speakers handle the separation again. It's not as clean a solution as having the audio codec output to a single jack but I'm willing to give it a try. The cost $2.99 on Amazon. I'll update this post once the cable arrives and let you know the outcome.

UPDATE 9/20/2013
Okay, splitter cable installed... still no subwoofer output. Try alternative audio source... still no subwoofer output! So it appears that after all the things I mentioned it looks like the subwoofer part of my Klipsch Pro Media 2.1 set has finally failed. I've never been a thumping bass fan, but I like to experience a full audio range (as best I can for me age and budget). I took the subwoofer apart to see if there was anything obviously wrong (such as blown capacitors or an internal fuse) however I couldn't find anything. I cleaned the volume and subwoofer knobs with electronics cleaner and reseated everything I could. No luck on any of these items. I guess I might be on the look out for a new set of speakers. Shame really as these have been great. The only issue now is whether there actually is any bass being output by the 889 sound chipset over the stereo channel output.