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Request change in handling of multi-channel

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dtc:

--- Quote from: RD James on February 08, 2018, 03:42:16 pm ---I have DVDs and Blu-rays with 3, 5, and 7 channels stored on them. 3 channels is typically L/R/C, 5 channels doesn't use the LFE, and 7 channels is 6.1
I don't have any Blu-rays or DVDs with 4 channels, but do have a few music tracks - though not SACD. 4.0 is typically stored in a 5.0 or 5.1 container.
I'm sure that I have some 6.0 discs, but can't see an easy way to identify them without playing them one-by-one.
I'm not clear on what mapping all 6 channel formats to 5.1 is supposed to fix anyway.
I just went through 25 6-channel SACDs using preview mode, and they're all treated as 5.1 by Media Center, not 6.0
I suspect this is another channel mapping issue caused by using the "Source Channels" with a DAC rather than an AVR / Sound Card.

--- End quote ---

Agreed, there is no way to tell if there is an LFE channel in a file other than by convention, since the file header only has the total number of channels. The header has no information about whether or not an LFE channel is present.

From Fitzcaraldo215 comments above, it seems like Source Number of Channels of 6 for an SACD does not map to 5.1, but some other mix without an LFE.    But you say all of your 6 channel map to 5.1. So there seems to be a disconnect on that.

Mapping all 6 to 5.1 would probably fix that problem, while introducing a problem for true 6.0 files, which are quite rare.

kr4:

--- Quote from: RD James on February 08, 2018, 11:57:46 am ---I'm not sure that there is anything for Media Center to do here, because Media Center is behaving correctly.
--- End quote ---
Yes, it is behaving as intended.  I am not disputing it but, as you point out, it is not behaving appropriately in all instances for all people.

Fitzcaraldo215:
Right.  I don't really need a fix for 6=5.1 if using Source Number of Channels.  Everything in my library maps fine for me using 5.1 and 7.1 zones with Zoneswitch.  I would be happy to stay that way.

I only raised the concern because others had reported having the problem, which was fixed by just using 5.1 or 7.1 as output parameters.

It appears there might be some extremely rare, old Mch files (like fine wine!) that are six-channel 6.0 and not 5.1.  On the other hand, I suspect there are many more current JR users who are experiencing a channel misassigment between 5.0/5.1 they just do not know about while using Source Number of Channels.  The audible symptoms are sometimes subtle, as they were for me.

But, what might make the most sense as JR policy here is to leave the current mechanism alone, 6 channels = 6.0, not 5.1 output.  Perhaps, just raising awareness of the issue better and including some sort of warning text when selecting the Source Number of Channels option would be sufficient.

RoderickGI:
Isn't this the real problem here?


--- Quote from: mojave on February 07, 2018, 09:46:18 am ---This is done automatically using ZoneSwitch. However, this doesn't work if trying to playback a mixed playlist.
--- End quote ---

If ZoneSwitch worked within a Playlist, switching smoothly from Stereo to 5.1 to 4.0 to 7.1, based on good rules which may mean some additional tagging of files for the desired output channel format, wouldn't this issue just go away?

Sure, "smoothly" may be difficult. There would at least be some switching issues for the target DAC/AVR/Sound Card, so transitions and Gapless playback may suffer. But that may be a reasonable tradeoff for being able to play any and all channel formats without intervention, in one Playlist.

Hendrik:

--- Quote from: Fitzcaraldo215 on February 08, 2018, 09:43:44 am ---But, 6 is not the same as 5.1 and JRiver interprets it as a 6.0 recording with no sub channel

--- End quote ---

I don't think this is true. The default channel layout for 6 channels without any layout indication is 5.1, and I also checked the DSD input plugin just in case it might override this - it does not.

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