Help with 3D sound.

[Not Given]

Hello, I am using the 3D sound with SFML, I have had no major problems with it until now. The problem I am having is when I play a sound directly behind the listener it plays in on the rear speaker channel, exactly like its supposed to. The problem with this is that if you are using a headset, hooked up to the standard green port (front) you will not hear anything from rear, this sounds completely obvious and normal, but unless you hook up another speaker you cannot normally hear rear sounds. What I want to know is how to make a sound that would normally play on the real channel  play on the other channels at a lesser volume, If this is possible.
                                                                                                                                                  Thanks in advance!

EDIT: To clarify, i would like to make the audio playing in the rear channel also play in the side channels at a lesser volume.

[Jesper Juhl]

Let me state clearly up front that I have no experience with 3D sound, so what I'm about to say may be complete nonsense.

Why don't you simply always play the "back" sound at full volume and at the same time in other channels also play the sound at low volume?
I'd guess that in a proper setup with back speakers no one would notice that the sound also plays in the side/front channels, but if back speakers are not available then you at least hear a weak sound...
Yeah, kind of a hack, but couldn't it work?

[Nexus]

Can't you achieve what you want by placing the listener accordingly in 3D space (probably by changing the Z value)?

"Rear" is not a fixed channel, everything depends on the coordinate system as specified in sf::Listener.

[eXpl0it3r]

Most games use options to choose between stereo, 5.1, 7.1, etc. and as such one can differentiate between the settings.

How sound positioning now gets actually implemented in bigger games, I don't know.

[Mario]

If 3D sound works properly without the headphones connected, I'd assume some hardware or driver issue. Once you connect headphones, it should be mixed properly for (typically) two channels/stereo. Since this doesn't happen, are you sure the port is indeed intended for headphones? If it is, can you make sure that you've connected the correct front panel connector (most offer a HDAudio compatible connector as well as a AC97 compatible connector - they're similar, but not exactly the same).