FLAC 6.1 playback

[SliverQQ]

Hi,
I have a Question regarding the playback of FLAC 6.1 streams in a MKV container.
Is VLC capable of playing 7 different channels in the right order (front L, frontR, center, rearL, rear R, rearcenter, LFE)?
Cause everytime I try to play VLC says something like "Audiodevice: 2Front 2Rear" and the channels are mixed up (the center channel is on my rearR speaker ...)
But this is Quadraphonic audio and not 6.1.
With a DTS-ES file and 7 or 8 channel WAV everything works just fine.
Also the same FLAC 6.1 file plays correctly with CCCP (libavcodec) and Media Player Classic

Has someone an explanation for this strange behaviour?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Can you share the file, please?

[SliverQQ]

file sample: http://www.mediafire.com/?esscr5dcs7rod88

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Thanks.

[tyler69]

Hi there. Is there any update on this problem? I also noticed exactly the same issue on Windows7 & OSX 10.7.1 with the latest VLC official release. The Files seem to play correctly with MplayerX (OSX) & MPC-HC x64 (Windows7).

Edit: MplayerX does not play the 6.1 FLAC correctly. The center is not playing through the right channel like in VLC, but through the left channel. However MPC-HC in Windows & XBMC in OSX plays it correctly.

[tyler69]

Does anybody have suggestions on how to fix this?
It's annoying, because VLC is my player of choice and i can't use it on 6.1 movies anymore..

BTW: I'm using a 2.0 Setup. Maybe this is helpful.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

There is no standardized channels order for FLAC with 7 or 8 channels. It is just invalid. VLC assumes 7.0, other applications assume 6.1 and yet other applications reject the whole thing. The later ones are correct.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html

[Lotesdelere]

But Xiph has released DirectShow filters with 7.1 channels support about two years ago:

http://xiph.org/dshow/news/

Version 0.83.17220
16 May, 2010
Fixed #1657: FLAC 7.1 wrong mapped channels

Version 0.82.16930
22 February, 2010
Added 7.1 channels support for FLAC and support for files bigger than 2GBytes.

Source code:
http://xiph.org/dshow/downloads/


The status of 6.1 is not clear though.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

As of 2013, 6.1 is front left, front right, front center, LFE, back center, side left & side right and 7.1 is front left, front right, front center, LFE, back left, back right, side left 6 side right.

VLC 2.0.6 has the definitive layouts.