5.1 sound sollution?

Well. As I have finally found the culprit for the crashing when trying to use Mercury Transmit for secondary monitor viewing (see this thread for background) I have now another problem. Smaller, though still a problem. I wonder if you guys have any suggestions?

Since I had to kill Sonic Studio 2 in order for it to not to interfere with Mercury Transmit I now am left without the ability to select 5.1 sound output mapping as far as I can tell. My 7.1 motherboard soundcard now shows up as a standard 2.0 stereo device in Premiere Pro CC (latest release v2017.1.2 Build 11.1.2 (22)).

I have tried setting the speakers up as 5.1 Surround in windows default sound settings. But it seems to do nothing.

I did try restarting Premiere Pro after changing the settings. No change.

I do have some vague recollection that there is an alternate audio driver that I should be able to use that shows the correct setup for Premiere but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was called. And googling it seems to bring up nothing.

I am looking around at external sound cards as a workaround also (at least until Adobe can find a way to work this bug out with Asus) But I am staying clear of those using Sonic Studio 2 for their interface... because of the issues it has with Mercury Transmit.

Anyone have any suggestions? Both on external soundcards and alternative sound drivers?