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[lucretius]

I have a  2 channel setup with a 2 channel DAC.  I like to play a 5.1 surround sound DSD64 (DSF) mix on this system.  I cannot get Media Center to "mix-down" to 2 channels; I get an error message telling me that my DAC does not support 6 output channels.  Is there any way to get Media Center to mix-down this 5.1 mix?

I should note that Media Center does mix-down a 5.1 surround sound flac file with no problem. But not DSD? 

[JimH]

Maybe you're bitstreaming?  That wouldn't work.

[lucretius]

Maybe you're bitstreaming?  That wouldn't work.

You're right. I unchecked Bitstreaming in the Options, then down mixing worked -- Media Center delivered the stream to my DAC at a 352.8kHz sample rate (PCM).

Curiously, I can play the same 5.1 DSD64 file in foobar2000 (with the DSD addons) and it will deliver a 2.0 DSD64 stream to my DAC.  Maybe it's something that can be built into Media Center?

[Awesome Donkey]

If I had to guess, foobar2000 is likely converting the 5.1 to a 2.0, which always has to go through a PCM stage (so DSD > PCM > DSD) and there's really no way to avoid it. If doing such conversions in MC, it also has to go through a PCM stage in the middle. DSD to PCM and PCM to DSD are lossy conversions.

One way around this is to use DSP Studio > Output Format and set it up accordingly. But do note, like mentioned above, if you convert the 5.1 to a 2.0 it does go through a PCM stage and you can't do it while bitstreaming. You can however probably setup a zone for this then use the ZoneSwitch feature to switch to it when trying to play a 5.1 channel DSD file. The other way around it is to find a 2.0 version of the track(s) if possible.