Author Topic: Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems  (Read 6263 times)

Renee Senger

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Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems
« on: August 11, 2020, 08:56:15 pm »
Uniaud32.sys (as ALSA) has controls related to multi-channel surround systems. I have already tested with  ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/uniaud/old/multtest.zip some real (hardware) multichannel sound cards (4.1, 5.1) like Sound Blaster Live 5.1, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and onboard interfaces like Realtek HD Audio in Asus M3A78-EM motherboard.

My question here is about these "pseudo" multi-channel onboard audio interfaces, like Realtek HD Audio, VIA Tech HD Audio, etc., announced to be 4.1,5.1, etc. surround channels capable, where software is used to redirect back panel microphone and line-in connectors as the additional audio channels output.

Are there any application or means to use this feature in OS/2 or it is completelly useless?

Dave Yeo

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Re: Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2020, 02:05:58 am »
I don't think there are any current software that uses the extra channels. VLC could possibly be made to use them but generally the multimedia system on OS/2 only knows about 2 channels so software would have to directly access uniaud.

Ian Manners

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Re: Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2020, 07:01:09 am »
If the source file you are playing has the stream/data encoded for the extra channels, this appears to work with Pauls new Uniaud builds and a Sound Blaster Live card. I assume here that it is the Uniaud driver that is decoding and positioning the streams for output via the various o/p's. Otherwise as Dave says, the OS/2 MM system is stereo only.


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Ian B Manners

Renee Senger

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Re: Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems
« Reply #3 on: August 23, 2020, 04:23:18 am »
If the source file you are playing has the stream/data encoded for the extra channels, this appears to work with Pauls new Uniaud builds and a Sound Blaster Live card. I assume here that it is the Uniaud driver that is decoding and positioning the streams for output via the various o/p's. Otherwise as Dave says, the OS/2 MM system is stereo only.

Sometime ago I have tested SB Live with Multitest and an earlier version of Uniaud. I remember not all channels of my 4.1 Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 was working. SB Live has many controls showed by Unimix. It's not easy to understand and try tests changing the values. I think new tests may be worth with the actual versions of uniaud32.sys from Paul!

Doug Bissett

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Re: Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems
« Reply #4 on: August 23, 2020, 08:32:13 pm »
Quote
Sometime ago I have tested SB Live with Multitest and an earlier version of Uniaud.

I have 4 SB Live adapters. One is completely dead. One works only with UNIAUD, and not Sanders' SB LIVE driver The other two don't work with UNIAUD, and do work with Sander's SB LIVE driver. The last time I tried them was about 4 years ago, so UNIAUD may run all of them now (I am not even going to try). Search for "Sound Blaster" (without the quotes, at HOBBES. There are a number of drivers listed. The one that I used was:
https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/drivers/sound/Sound_Blaster_Live_0-8-1b.zip.

NOTE: that Sanders' driver has been accused of causing problems, but I don't think I ever saw a problem with it.

I quit using the SB LIVE cards, because win 10 doesn't support them, and I really don't need the administrative headaches of having two sound systems in my machine.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Multi-Channel Surround Sound Systems
« Reply #5 on: August 23, 2020, 11:00:46 pm »

NOTE: that Sanders' driver has been accused of causing problems, but I don't think I ever saw a problem with it.

Seems to me I heard it related to how much memory was installed.
Quote
I quit using the SB LIVE cards, because win 10 doesn't support them, and I really don't need the administrative headaches of having two sound systems in my machine.

For years I used a PAS16 card, which also included a SB clone. It was great basically having 2 sound cards. PAS16 for OS/2 sounds, SB for Winos2 sounds, even at the same time and both working under DOS under OS/2. Helped that they shared speakers etc.