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Topic: SACD playback: I don’t get 5.1, just stereo + I cannot play via S/PDIF (Read 4509 times) previous topic - next topic
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SACD playback: I don’t get 5.1, just stereo + I cannot play via S/PDIF

I got some of my SACDs ripped and tried to play them with foobar.

Problem is that I dont have the 5.1 surround sound its just plain stereo. Foobar says that it's 6 channels.

I have a XFI Xtreme Music PCI with the latest PAX drivers. I go via SPDIF to my receiver. I can playback DVDs/HDDVD/BluRays with full DD/DTS support (My receiver says so and changes automatically the mode)

Foobar dont change to digital output and so I cannot hear anything except stereo. Is there an option anywhere in foobar which tells it to put the sound to the spdif output or is this not possible.

I tried with ASIO and SPDIF in the options. without any luck.

SACD playback: I don’t get 5.1, just stereo + I cannot play via S/PDIF

Reply #1 –
It's not quite clear to me what you're trying to achieve, but here are some pointers:

- There are several plugin components available which can downmix the mc-tracks
- SPDIF can only transport stereo AFAIK
- foobar2000 does not support bitstreaming of DSD (or any other format AFAIK). I find it interesting, though, that you seem to have achieved DTS bitstreaming, I've never got it to work.

SACD playback: I don’t get 5.1, just stereo + I cannot play via S/PDIF

Reply #2 –
Your receiver cannot decode DSD (SACD) signals so it would be pointless to send that format as-is digitally to the receiver.

The decoder in FLAC will decode the surround DSD and put it out on your audio card outputs - all 6 of them. The Front L/R channels can be also send to digital output too, but you cannot cram the other channels in there too like  that - uncompressed.
That's why DolbyDigital and DTS formats where created - those are loosy compression formats that allow the 5.1 channels in the bandwidth of 2 channels (SPDIF). Kind of like mp3 but for surround.
You would have to encode those 6 channels on-the-fly in DolbyDigital or DTS in order to send via SPDIF. That would be done with loss of quality anyway. Creative sells a software that would do that on their cards that have DSP, but I don't know if is worth it.