For the sake of science and experimentation I just tried to see if it's possible to play a movie with surround (.mkv file with AAC 5.1 surround sound) out of multiple outputs of my Motu soundcard. It's not a typical consumer soundcard with built-in surround support, and I do not have a typical external surround receiver to decode a digital surround signal into 6 separate channels either. So VLC needs to send audio to 6 outputs for this to work.
So I wonder, has anyone ever tried this before?
It doesn't seem too promising so far. Everywhere in VLC it's only possible to select a stereo pair of audio outputs. But for 5.1 surround to work on this setup, the player would need to send left/right/rear-left/rear-right/center/sub to 6 separate analog outputs (either 6 mono or 3 stereo or any similar combination). I've been toying around with all sorts of settings in VLC, but so far it refuses to output more than stereo.
My setup is Windows 7, 64-bit, Motu 2408 mk3 bridged together with a Motu 24 I/O giving me a total of 32 inputs and outputs. This soundcard works best in ASIO mode, but WaveOut (MME) and WASAPI work well too. DirectSound though - being mostly a gaming standard - is not supported quite as well.
It this possible at all?