Appendix F: Surround Sound
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Appendix F: Surround Sound
Appendix F: Surround Sound
How to Playback a Surround Sound Mix
You can listen to surround sound mixes without special pro audio software with
both Layla3G and Gina3G. You can play surround sound Dolby Digital, Windows
Media Audio, and DTS encoded data, among others. The following section will
explain how to do this with Windows Media Player 9 on Windows XP. Windows
XP Service Pack 2 may change some of these settings.
First you need to be aware of how Microsoft has decided to decode surround sound
mixes. While Gina3G can playback up to 6 channels through the analog outputs,
and 8 channels via ADAT, Layla3G can playback up to 8 channels via analog or
ADAT. This is how Microsoft decodes those 8 channels:
1 – front left
2 – front right
3 – center (front)
4 – sub
5 – rear left
6 – rear right
7 – center left
8 – center right
Both Layla3G and Gina3G allow you to decide how many channels you are going
to use for the surround sound mix. Most multi-channel audio interfaces appear to
Windows as a series of stereo device pairs. For surround sound playback,
Windows wants to see one big multi-channel audio device instead of a bunch of
stereo audio devices. This is where our exclusive SuperChannel feature comes in.
SuperChannel allows you to change how Windows sees the inputs and allows you
to play back surround sound mixes without pro audio software. All you need is
Windows Media Player and a surround encoded WMA file.
NOTE:
The information and screen shots here pertain to Windows 2000 and
Windows XP
without SP2
. Windows XP Service Pack 2 may make some
minor changes to these screens and to the options that are available.