Topic: Quadrophony with .mo3

[Vulture]

just a theory (or idea) for quadrophony...

2 stereo wave (or mp3) files together in one file (mo3 maybe?), 1st stereo file will be played trough first soundcard and other trough second soundcard, that way you have 4 speakers - quadrophony

The idea came out when i was watching death concert live in L.A. - front left speaker: bass guitar little louder, front right: second guitar little louder and back speakers: audience

i know it's possible cause i made that effect in cool edit pro with multiple tracks, but i would like to make it as one file, then trough plugin (for xmplay normally) you could play the file in a simple way (2 souncards would be needed ofcourse)...

Can this be done? I would like to do it, but i don't know what file format to use? ideas?
.mo3 maybe?

(sorry for bad english)

[Vulture]

another idea: making 2 stereo wav files, one named a.wav (front L and R) and the other b.wav (rear L and R), ziping them together and changing extension of that zip file to .qpa. Now, making few changes to wav (or mp3) plugin so we can have nice looking menu where we can assign a soundcard that will play a.way and another soundcard that will play b.wav files.

It will be like having 2 media players on screen that play on different soundcards at the same time.

can this be done? i'm looking for someone who will help me do this... anyone interested?

[raina]

Some formats that support multichannel encoding are: AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA Pro, AC3, DTS, FLAC and WavPack.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Multichannel

[Torkell]

I think what Vulture wants is to be able to output the front channels through one sound card, and the rear channels through a different card. Not heard of anything that does this, but it'd come in handy for cheap 4-channel support (onboard sound plus stero sound card).

[Vulture]

Exactly, i managed to do this with cool edit, one stereo mp3 was played trough onboard soundcard and the other trough pci soundcard and it sounds great. Front channels were Neurosis - Suspended in light and back channels - Tribes of Neurot - Suspended in light...

Only thing i need is a plugin that will recognize FRONT.mp3 and REAR.mp3 and then it plays Front.mp3 on onboard soundcard and Rear.mp3 on pci soundcard... simple as that

This can be done with 2 winamps, 1st - in directsound output plugin set device as onboard soundcard and on the other winamp set device to be PCI soundcard. Now play both mp3s at the same time and you'll have same effect i got from cool edit

It would be cool to make plugin that works only for .qpa files (zipped mp3s), that reads .qpa archive and then plays FRONT and REAR media files trough their specified soundcards, that way you could use any audio format for quadrophonic sound (front.wav, rear.wav or front.ogg, rear.ogg etc.) instead of making another file format with 4 channels. Coding from mp3 to that format would be a pain in the ass

In short, you zip (any) 2 audio files named FRONT and REAR, change extension of that zip to .qpa, and plugin just redirects FRONT and REAR files to their soundcards...

Note: .qpa is extension i made up, the format does not really exist (it stands for QuadroPhonic Audio)

To bad i have no coding skills... 

[raina]

Ok, this is a cool low-end solution, yeah. But I think finding a non-reluctant coder to realize it is going to be hard since even the on-board soundchips have multiple output channels nowadays.

[Vulture]

Hmmm... ok then, is there a format that supports 4 channels only (not 5, 5.1, 6 or anything like that JUST 4)? What i'm trying to do is to have REAL 4 channels, NOT surround sound shit that decodes stereo signal to 5+1 speaker or anything like that.

Looks like i'll have to do it all by myself...
Too bad quadraphony died, it's so much better than this modern 5.1 stuff...

[Torkell]

Most of the multichannel formats do have native support for multiple channels. As an example ac3 has native support for between 1 and 6 channels. I can't think of any compression format which decodes 2 channels to 5.1 or similar. Note that Dolby Pro Logic-type stuff encodes a 5.1 channel signal into 2 channels so it can be transferred over a format or link that only has two channels (e.g. most game consoles support Dolby Pro Logic output for surround sound, even though they only have a stereo output). Pro Logic is not a compression format.

[Dotpitch]

Hmmm... ok then, is there a format that supports 4 channels only (not 5, 5.1, 6 or anything like that JUST 4)? What i'm trying to do is to have REAL 4 channels, NOT surround sound shit that decodes stereo signal to 5+1 speaker or anything like that.

well... plain wav supports multiple channels, but it generates huge files. mp3 doesn't support more than 2 channels (at least, i've never seen any encoding options for it ), but ogg vorbis, aac and wma do (windows media 9 professional supports 2, 5.1 and 7.1 channels, just silence the channels you don't want, have or need ). and that's all seperate channels, not upmixing.

[Vulture]

thanks a lot guys, you've helped me a lot! I will seek wisdom in .ogg format  (or try with windows media 9 professional...)

couple years ago some guy made 4 channel .ogg by making 4 channel wav and then converting to .ogg BUT back then ogg didn't support multiple channels... now it does

Thanks again

[raina]

thanks a lot guys, you've helped me a lot! I will seek wisdom in .ogg format  (or try with windows media 9 professional...)

Stay clear of the dark side, go with Ogg Vorbis.

[Vulture]

problem... how to make a 4 channel ogg? I can't find any software to do that. back in 2001 some guy made little program that converts 2 stereo wavs to 4 channel raw and then he used oggenc to encode from 4 ch raw to 4 ch ogg but he never published that proggy on net (or did he?). Arrrgghhhh! i'm loosing my mind!!!

i would like at least to know how to make 4 channel wav file from 2 stereo (or 4 mono wavs).

Ideas?