The VideoLAN Forums

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?

Can you share the file, please?

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

Thanks.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.