if cake walk lets you select what sound plays on what output, you're ok ... otherwise you might want to look at launching multiple copies of winamp, each set to play on a different output.

honestly, i don't know how to do it in windows, my experience is with linux.

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i think i found a program that will let me wright a file with the six channles of 5.1. i have a 5.1 card too i just need to install it and give it a go. if it works that will be good. six sounds out of one pc is pretty good

 

Isn't it only 5 channels not 6?, the sixth .1 channel is a subwoofer output mixed and filtered off the other five.

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that is possible in cheap home theater receivers, like the "all in one" units that come with some really cheap speakers and a crappy amplifier dvd player combo

but a 5.1 sound card has 6 discrete channels, all of them full range and independent. the only possible restriction you'd run into is Windows trying to mess with things, or windows software doing some sort of "matrix mixing". that could result in what you refer to, mixing and filtering usually just the front two channels and pumping it out the sw channel. same goes for the center channel, its usually just a differential (not sure thats the right term?) mix of the front two channels, filtered for the vocal freq range

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OK, I wasn't aware of that - bit misleading calling it 5.1 then?.

No, the centre channel isn't mixed and filtered for 5.1, it's an entirely seperate digital channel on the DVD, as are all FIVE - only the .1 channel is generated.

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we shall soon find out how windows behaves as soon as i get a chance to install the soundcard.

 

I look forward to hearing the results.

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i'm not haveing much luck. i used a program called cinematicmp3 that lets you create a sound file that is supposed to be six mono channles. the first thing that seems funny to me is it saves it as a wav file. i played it throuh media player and it is the a mix of two sounds coming out of each speaker. i downloaded a program that is supposed to be able to play 5.1 on a pc but when i go to start the program it says its missing dsound.dll. the file was there so i downloaded it from a site and overwroteit but still have the same problem. im thinking about loading linux and seeing what i can do with that

 

you don't have to "load" linux, just download Knoppix or Ubuntu and run it off the cd.

to play a wav file containing more than 2 channels, you need a surround sound aware application. Winamp is I believe, as are most of the DVD player programs. Regular media player just handles plain stereo.

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I had a sound card in my other comp and ran the motherboard with both of them leading to the same output, and TEH SOUND on the motherboard went: KAPOP!, so now I use a sound card only and the entire block of mic input, sound output, etc on the MB is shot

I have a soundblaster 16 in it right now, with a nvidia 7300 and 2 gigs of ram, but winblows XP has to be put back in it because it would not save the changes for teh new video card

Hopefully I get it back today.

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so if i run linux off of the cd i wouldn't have to load any drivers ?

 

If the drivers are included on the distribution...

 

3 out of 4 of those are isa cards somebodys got a bloody nerve selling those

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when i was building pc based karaoke/disco machines, i used usb sound cards (cost about £15 GBP each) and had 5 connected to the computer, thus giving me 5 discreet stereo channels. If i had needed more then i could just plug in more, simple as. (although limited by processor speed - which i'll get too)

As each usb sound card was installed - it was named by windows as - for example 'USB Sound', 'USB Sound 1'....ect

::WINDOWS ONLY::
DirectSound is very simple to set up, provided you just want to play sounds or music, eg mp3's, and you address the sound cards by name.

so i made a very small program (about 50 lines of code max) in vb, to allow me to play different mp3's on each of the different sound cards. worked brilliant. then later was built up so that each of the sound cards run to a disco mixer and improved the software to suit our machine, choosing songs ect. (side note: directSound is REALLY powerful, and can do some amazing things with sounds, and even more with the sound buffer)

(this was before usb mixers were affordable)

I also used the same setup on my home automation computer (ERIC - Electronic Resource Integration Computer - couldnt come up with a better accrynym) anyways, this setup allowed me to run my multi-room sound system, with each room being able to choose their music from the panel on the wall, all playing off the one computer (which also handles loads of other stuff round the house)

I imagine that it would meet your criteria quite well, and you can add usb sound cards (they use very low bandwidth) as you see fit, up to a maximum of around 16 or so i would say (on a 1ghz pc), and if you used usb 2 sound cards (not sure if they exist, but im sure they do) and a faster processor - i cant see why you couldn't run up to 50 or 60 indipendent stereo channels.

hope this helps, i choose this method for my project because it scales up so easily.

 

weegee that sounds like what im looking for. i looked up direct soound and from what i found its a part of direct x. is that correct? if so how would i access that. would i need some kind of another program to use it? i know you said you wrote a vb script for it but thats beyond my capabilities at this time.