Downmix surround to Dolby Pro-Logic at the OS/driver level in Windows 7?

Posted by davr on Super User See other posts from Super User or by davr
Published on 2011-02-06T06:35:41Z Indexed on 2011/02/06 7:28 UTC
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First off, I'm talking about Dolby Pro-Logic, a really old tech for encoding 4 audio channels (L/R/C/SR) into two analog outputs, and then extracting them again. It was used in surround sound systems in the last century.

I have a modern PC that can output 5.1 analog audio (Three outputs on the back carry six channels of audio). But I have a really old surround sound reciever that only has a two-channel, L/R input, which it extracts 4 channels of audio from, and outputs to 5.1 speakers.

What I want is some way for the OS, Windows 7, to act as if I really had 5.1 audio channels available, so applications produce surround audio, but before outputting it out of the back of my PC, apply Dolby Pro-Logic matrix encoding so that it outputs over only two channels. These two channels would then get sent to my receiver via a RCA cable, which would decode it again and drive the surround speakers.

Is anything like this possible? I'm pretty sure I could do it at an application / codec level, but I'm looking for something that I just have to set once.

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