Multichannel Audio Using S/PDIF and 5.1 receiver?
Hello,
I am totally new at this, so if there is a tutorial on this somewhere you could point me too...
Anyway, I am looking to have six sounds play to six different speakers. I am using sfplay to play wav files (each file is two channels). The sfplay goes to a dac object with 6 channels.
The wavs play fine over the first two channels using an external sound card with S/PDIF out to a 5.1 receiver. None of the other channels play. When I double-click the dac and go to i/o mapping only two channels are available.
I am running Max 5.0 on a Intel q6600 machine with 8 gigs of ram under Windows Vista. I am trying to use an external Soundblaster Live 24 card that connects to my receiver using coaxial SPDIF.
The receiver works in 5.1 for other applications but when I load Max it reverts to stereo (and adstatus reports only 2 output channels).
Any pointers to articles for the newbie or other advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
pcmxa schrieb:
> The receiver works in 5.1 for other applications but when I load Max
> it reverts to stereo (and adstatus reports only 2 output channels).
Did you try asio drivers?
Stefan
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I am not showing any ASIO drivers in the DSP display. It shows direct_sound and mme. I am using direct_sound. Are there third party ASIO drivers I can install?
Patrick
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your original question, but isn't S/PDIF by definition a 2-channel protocol? I don't believe you can do multi-channel audio via standard S/PDIF. Are you sure you aren't using (or wanting to use) ADAT Lightpipe - an optical multi-channel protocol?
Thanks for the reply, You are right. On further research I found out I can't do what I want on S/PDIF. I will look into the ADAT solution. I am totally new to this world and am trying to learn the hardware issues while I teach myself maxMSP. I got the the ASIO drivers to work so I can individually address the 7.1 card on my motherboard, which works for the studio but will need to find installation solutions. Thanks for the suggestion.
Patrick
It is entirely possible to do multichannel from MaxMSP to a receiver via S/PDIF however you need to install Dolby Digital Live which is available from the Creative Labs website. This is also provided you are using an ASIO sound card such as one from the Creative Soundblaster series or similar. Dolby Digital Live may not have been available when this post was made however it is possible to purchase for around $8 today.
Some adjustments to the configuration of the sound card also need to be made within the set up software provided in order to ensure that it is running multichannel audio out via S/PDIF.
Regards,
1CS Support Team