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[quartermain]

I have a media PC with HDMI, optical digital, and 8 channel analogue outputs. I want to feed a multichannel signal to an A/V amplifier and thence to a 5.1 speaker system. However my wife is very hard of hearing and needs wireless headphones, so I am looking for a way of sending a stereo downmix to the analogue outputs at the same time as sending multi channel to the A/V receiver via HDMI.

I understand that MC has a multi zone feature - can it be made to do this?

[Hendrik]

Sadly the linked zone feature doesn't work as of yet with video playback - which I assume is your goal, since you mentioned 5.1 surround audio.

[quartermain]

OK thanks. Since I posted the question (should have searched harder....) I found this post:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81623.msg580807#msg580807

which does suggest it's possible. Am I misunderstanding something here?

[Hendrik]

Well I suppose you could do it like that, and manually build the 2 channels for the headphones, and let media center output 8 channels.
Somehow I thought you need a second audio device to pull it off, but if you set it up like this, then it should work.

[mwillems]

OK thanks. Since I posted the question (should have searched harder....) I found this post:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81623.msg580807#msg580807

which does suggest it's possible. Am I misunderstanding something here?

One thing to note, though, is that Matt wound up having to give up on wireless headphones in that configuration because the sync wasn't workable: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81623.msg580308#msg580308 .  What Matt wound up doing was using a pair of wired headphones hooked up to a headphone amp that was fed by his spare two receiver line level outputs, so everything was running off the same DAC clock in the receiver.  A setup like that is more likely to be able to sync correctly, and will likely work much better in your application.  

It's possible that your specific wireless headphones may work out better than Matt's did, and it's worth trying it out to see before you buy anything else.  But, for a couple of reasons, my guess would be that sync will be a problem in this application with any pair of wireless headphones.  

[csimon]

OK thanks. Since I posted the question (should have searched harder....) I found this post:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81623.msg580807#msg580807

which does suggest it's possible. Am I misunderstanding something here?

This only works because both "zones" (main surround and subsidiary, simultaneous 2-channel output) are being generated by the same 8-channel output card.  What you want to do is output multi-channel via HDMI and also have a simultaneous 2-channel analogue output, this won't be possible because of synch issues.

But if you ditch the HDMI and send 5.1 + 2.0 via your 8-channel sound card it will work...for audio only.  but obviously your HDMI is carrying video as well, so you need the HDMI output.

Best thing I can think of is to invest in a HDMI Audio Extractor device that splits the audio off onto separate outputs.

[deanorth]

Unless I understand your question in the wrong way, the device I use, Parasound HALO P7, is actually doing that.
At least, I do use it like that, when I plug my grado PS1000 in it (not so often, it's not perfect sound wise for the PS1000)