Mixing Surround w/ non-surround

jkowtko · Post by **jkowtko** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:10 am

I would like to be able to play music tracks and background music in 5.1 surround, and at the same time overlay FX to individual speakers as needed.

I have the M-Audio Rev 7.1 card right now, which has surround emulation from a stereo input ... however I don't think it can mix the two -- either it plays in full surround, or it doesn't. And you have to set the card up in it's control panel that way, and the card doesn't like between switched in between modes without a PC reboot. So the card would have to stay in one more or the other.

I can think of two options here:

1) put two cards in the machine, one in surround mode and the other not.

2) convert my stereo tracks to 5.1 format, and let the BASS driver play them out through the appropriate 6 output channels. In this case the card doesn't have to support surround processing, but the BASS driver has to be able to mix a 5.1 file with stereo and mono files (... Mike, can the BASS driver do this?)

Does anyone know of a better alternative than this?

Does anyone have suggestions for an audio file converter that will convert stereo files to 5.1 WMA or OGG?

Thanks. John

Mike Daniell · Post by **Mike Daniell** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 6:36 pm

jkowtko wrote:2) convert my stereo tracks to 5.1 format, and let the BASS driver play them out through the appropriate 6 output channels. In this case the card doesn't have to support surround processing, but the BASS driver has to be able to mix a 5.1 file with stereo and mono files (... Mike, can the BASS driver do this?)

With 5.1 formats, the BASS driver plays the individual channels thru the correct speakers provided you leave the 'Speaker' field blank in SCS. If you play a stereo file thru this same SCS device at the same time as you are playing a 5.1 file, I wouldn't expect there to be an issue but I haven't specifically tested this. The stereo file should play thru the 'front' speakers, ie the first two output channels. Not sure if this answers your question.

jkowtko · Post by **jkowtko** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:58 am

It more-or-less answers it, Mike. I guess I wouldn't be playing stereo on top of 5.1 as much as I would be playing mono FX clips on individual speakers while the 5.1 is playing. So if BASS can handle that well, then I'm in good shape.

First, though, I have to get a 5.1 converter up and running. I spent a few hours yesterday and today trying to get FooBar with the VI VST plugin working. the doom9 site has a full writeup on this, but it's mostly puzzle-ware, and with versions of different software components constantly evolving, I haven't been able to get something that works yet.

For playback through SCS, I could open up the sample "6 channel WMA" file provided on the BASS web site and it recognizes the format just fine in SCS. However SCS does not recognize an AC3 file, which was the default output format from the FooBar solution. I either need to find out which other formats SCS/BASS will recognize, or find an encoder which will let me produce 6 channel WMA. Can anyone help with this?

I think the FooBar approach is a promising one though ... so if anyone out there has tried it and been able to successfully generate 5.1 files that are playable through SCS, or a 5.1 CD that can be played on the home stereo surround receiver, I would be very interested in hearing about it.

Thanks. John