I know that early interations of the IS7 had a motherboard defect that prevented more than 2 channel sound as well as having a defective microphone in. This is the case with my IS7 board. I can RMA it and have it fixed, but to me it isn't worth the hassle. You can program one of the outputs to be the rear channel,which I did and I now have 4 channel sound. I also got a USB headset to avoid the microphone in. It works pretty well. There's always the possibility of adding in a PCI soundcard. This is a known issue with the IS7, I don't know if the IC7 has the same problem.