USB Sound card and 5.1 for stereo files

[Goofjuzo]

Hello,

I have a Mac Mini without optical audio, I buy a Soundblaster Live 5.1 USB Sound Card (working fine).
When I play a 5.1 DVD sound play on 6 channels but for Divx or Mp3 sound play only on 2 channels (seems logical).
How can I play stereo files on 6 channels ? (I do it with Ubuntu and Windows)
Is it the same with internal sound card ?

(sorry for my english)

Thank you.

 

[WinterMute]

Stereo is, by definition, 2 channels.

Why would you want to play a 2 channel sound over 6 channels?

 

[Goofjuzo]

I use my Mac Mini as Media Center, so I prefer that the sound results from 4 corners of the room.
Before my first media center on Ubuntu play all the sounds on 6 channels and it's really better (for me).

 

[WinterMute]

OK, just curious really, I'd imagine you'd have to duplicate the stereo track into the surround channels and encode it to an AC3 file perhaps.

You could import the file into something like Soundtrack Pro, copy it to a second track and pan that track to the rear speakers and then output the result to Compressor which can output AC3 files.

What you then play that back on I've no idea frankly. Quicktime maybe?

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

If you use a program like VLC or Mplayer OSX you can up-mix and split on the fly - splitting the audio into multiple channels as its played. (open the audio options and click "advanced" to show these with VLC - in Mplayer, you use a command-line type interface to enable it)

There are a lot of options there.

Apart from that - I don't know, I'm sure there must be some options with that sound card, but I have no experience with it.