Downmixing surround to stereo

[Michael Sargent]

I have been ripping DVD-Audio to WMA Lossless. Some disks have both stereo and surround mixes, and I will rip both if present. But many only have surround mixes. These play just find using Windows Media Player (5.1 speakers on the computer), but when I play them downstairs on my Denon AVR-4308CI using Asset there is a serious issue.

The Denon will only accept stereo LPCM up to 48 kHz, so Asset is correctly transcoding to be compatible. But surround mixes seem to be downmixed as follows:

Front to front.
Rears to front.
Center ?
LFE seems to be lost.

Is there any way to control this? The downmixed results are less than satisfying. You can really hear this where the original Stereo and Surround mixes were ripped because playing the Stereo mix is fine, but the downmixed Surround rip is weak. It would be really nice to be able to downmix all channels to a ProLogic IIx compatible mix and let the Denon (mostly) reconstruct it.

Anyways, the big question is there any way to control this?

Thanks,
Mike

P.S. When I get a chance I'll work on Denon over their way too limited UPnP support.

[Spoon]

Re: Downmixing surround to stereo

I will mark as a bug, there is no way of changing the process.

[Michael Sargent]

Re: Downmixing surround to stereo

Thanks Spoon. I'll keep my eyes open for the next release.

Mike

[Michael Sargent]

Re: Downmixing surround to stereo

I will mark as a bug, there is no way of changing the process.

Did this ever get dealt with in the latest Asset release?

Thanks,
Mike

[Spoon]

Re: Downmixing surround to stereo

Your best bet would be to convert these files before hand then you can control the mapping of channels using DSP effects (in dBpoweramp), or some other program.