I recently picked up a M-Audio's Revolution 7.1 card -- largely because it supported SRS Circle Surround II which i feel to be superior to Dolby Pro Logic II and JRSS II Sadly, Media Center does not seem to like surround sound processing at the sound card level.
Here's what happened:
1. I configured the sound card so it'd matrix two channel audio into 5.1
2. I played back a song in MC with the "channels" setting of the "output format" menu set to "source number of chanels"
Result: output out of only the front two speakers
3. I played back a song in MC with the "channels" setting of the "output format" menu set to "two channels (stereo)"
Result: output out of only the front two speakers
4. Without chaning the settings of the sound card, I played back the same file using Windows Media Player
Result: output out of all chanels
It seems that the only way to get MC to play nice with sound-card level 5.1 processing is to set output to "JRSS II." But that means that JRSS II is the only way to process 5.1 unless you want to run the audio through two different matrixing systems (which would be bad me thinks)
Am I missing something?