[MPlayer-users] 6 channel bug?

[Stephen Davies]

On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, Jeffrey Hammel wrote:

> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> I just compiled mplayer.  Playing DVDs seems fine in stereo mode, but the
> language portion of audio seems to nearly disappear when I use the
> -channels 6 option.  Is this a bug? Or am I missing something [tried to
> read as many docs as possible before mailing].  Also note that using
> -channels 4 works, but sounds horrible.  I have also tried
> mplayer -aop list=surround, and it seems to work.  Is this, in fact, what
> I want?

Hi,

You didn't say what speaker arrangements you have.  I assume that you are
using analogue output from your Audigy to your speakers?  How many
physical speakers do you have?

Using -aop list=surround when playing DVDs results in the AC3 code
downmixing the audio to matrix surround sound, and then the surround
plugin dematrixing the audio back into 4 channel sound.

So that will provide some surround effect, but it's not the best way to
hear DVDs.  (OTOH, many ripped video files have surround audio, in which
case the surround plugin is the right thing to use).

As for DVD audio and the ac3 decoder - the "channels" switch should be all
that the decoder needs to make the right output mix.

Using -channels 6, the symptoms are that your centre channel isn't
working.  Are you sure that your audio routings are right, and that your
LFE and centre channel speakers are connected the right way round?  You
might want to try connecting your front left and right pair to the
lfe/centre output on your card and see if you then hear centre dialogue
from one of them.

I'm not sure about the distorted -channels 4 output.  Mine works right but
I'm not so up to date with the CVS at the moment.

Regards,
Steve