On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 13:19:01 -0800, "Adam"
<Adam@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>Hi hopes this aint to silly question! I have my media center pc connected to
>a sony dav 5.1 system via spdif, everything works great. If I play dvds that
>support 5.1 sounds it all works fine. But most of time I listern to music and
>it only comes out the Front 2 speakers, I was just wondering if theres some
>sort of plugin or some setting somewhere that will get media center to just
>clone the 2 front speakers.
>
>
>Any sugestions will be great!!
>
>Cheers, Adam 
Some music purists would say you should just use the two speakers the
CD is designed to support and the music producers have presumably
taylored their music too.
Others like to have a surround sound field even when the music was
designed for two speakers. Usually this can be done by the receiver
using one of the receiver's surround processing modes. You need to
check whether your Sony receiver supports any surround processing
modes. If so, try them out and see if you prefer any to the "pure"
two channel solution. These sound processing modes generally take two
channel sound or two channels sound and a Dolby encoded surround
channel and synthesizes a full 5.1 sound field. Some people like some
of these sound fields better than the original two chanel sound and
others don't.
The sound system on the Media Centre PC may also have surround sound
processing support built into its software. I would think, if it
does, it will be found in the software provided by the sound card
manufacturer. It may also be available as part of the MCPC general
software. I am not familiar with the Media Centre PC software so can't
offer advice on where to look specifically. On my system the Creative
Sound card has a AudioHQ program that allows you to changes settings
in an EAX Control Panel option for what it calls Environment Sound
Fields. If you have similar functionality with your sound card you
can try it out. Personally I would try the reciever's sound
processing modes first because, if avialable, it will be much easier
to use in my opinion.
