hi,
recently i have bought a Panasonic Home Theater. when i play normal mp3 files on it, the rear (surround) speakers do not work. i have learned that the problem is mp3 is normal stereo (2 channels) but HT is designed to work with 5.1
my question is, whether there exist a software in linux which can convert these two ???
please help!
Its possible an appropriate .asoundrc file will pipe sound to the rear (surround speakers). You could ask for help on IRC channel freenode #alsa, … or simply research .asoundrc on the web.
How exactly is your home threater setup? Is is 5.1 or 7.1, I have a 7.1 system hooked up right now with spdif straight to the reciever. In most cases you need to tell alsa, or whatever your using to use the extra channels. In most cases most streams will be two channels, unless you have a surround sound track. Then it will be 5.1, in those cases many times you won’t hear the rear satellite channels. I have a surround copy of a Beatles album done in 5.1 and under windows, and nix, I only hear 5.1 so two of my speakers are unused, in this case the rear.
It also depends on your receiver it should be able to upmix if give the proper inputs but this is not a sure thing. For example if you have a Blu-ray player hooked to your system you won’t be able to play the newer protocol due to the fact that spdif does not support those formats. Also support for native playback is still in development, and some people have to convert them to a more playable format such as flac, or acc to get it working. You also might want to follow some of the mailing lists as it can be a long process to get your asoundrc file correct to the way you want it.
thanks for the kind replies. i found the option on the HT itself.