I have the VL Sound 5.1 plugin for Winamp which enables 5.1 surround sound emulation for stereo music files on Windows Vista/7. I'm just wondering, is there something similar for Windows Media Player 12 as I use it to watch movies/music videos and it'd be nice to at least get emulated 5.1 surround sound.
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Go to speakers configuration in Vista/7, Playback devices, Speakers -> properties, Enhancements, check 'Speaker fill'. | |||
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I've been fighting the same problem for several days now, and I've come to the conclusion that WMP12 can't yet output an emulated 5.1 (or 7.1) signal. It needs a new release or a plugin to provide this functionality. (WMP12 may be able to output a true 5.1 or 7.1 signal if the source file is correspondingly encoded, but I don't have any such source files with which to check.) I have a new Toshiba Satellite P755-S5272 laptop -- full specs at http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/satellite/P750/P755-S5270 -- and its Realtek on-board sound "card" can be fully configured for everything from stereo to full-on 7.1 surround sound. Late last night, it occurred to me that my Onkyo TX-SR605 receiver -- full specs at http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=TX-SR605&class=Receiver&p=s -- has the ability to up-convert stereo, so ... ... first, I ran things as they were and queried the Onkyo's display for its input, and it clearly showed that it was receiving a 7.1 audio signal from the Toshiba. Yet, only the front left/right speakers were emitting any sound whatsoever. And this didn't change, regardless of what I did to the WMP12 settings. But, when I changed the settings on the Realtek "card" to stereo, the Onkyo reflected exactly what I had done to the Realtek, and its upconvert capabilities clicked in ... and the sound was terrific: full 7.1 theater surround sound emulated from a stereo MP3 or WAV file. I think I've determined that when Realtek is set to 7.1 audio output -- and remember, it doesn't matter what I've done to WMP12 -- it takes WMP12's output of my two-channel stereo MP3 and WAV files and places it exactly on the channels specified by WMP12, i.e., left/right stereo. But because Realtek is set to 7.1 audio, it then sends eight channels of information, two with music and six with nothing, to the Onkyo, and the Onkyo faithfully reproduces what it receives; it sees no reason to upconvert just because six of eight valid channels have no audio information. But when Realtek is set to stereo, it takes WMP12's stereo output and passes that to the Onkyo, which, in turn, sees exactly that and knows that it can upconvert the two channels to eight. Voilá! So, until Microsoft upgrades WMP12 to include a 5.1 and/or 7.1 audio upconvert or emulate mode, or someone produces a WMP plugin that can do the same thing, I suggest investing in a quality receiver like the Onkyo that can do the emulation on its own. BTW, the DVD player that comes with the Toshiba is the Toshiba Video Player 3D, which suffers from the same deficiency (and benefits from the same solution) as WMP12. But the stock Blu-ray player on the Toshiba is the Corel WinDVD for Toshiba, which plays Blu-ray's native 5.1 (and, presumably, 7.1) audio just fine. So I have to switch the Realtek back to 7.1 audio to get it to work correctly with a Blu-ray disk. Otherwise, the Corel outputs 5.1 (or 7.1) audio, then the Realtek downgrades it to stereo, and by the time it gets to the Onkyo, it's been messed with too much for the Onkyo's emulation software to bring it back correctly. | |||
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In my case On-board Realtek sound driver itself automatically splits the mp3 audio into 5.1 automatically even whatever media player i use . So i request you to try update your sound driver software to latest version or OS upgrade. Because while using XP the same sound driver produces the 5.1(i heard the the all frequencies of sound in all speakers ), but After OS Upgrade Vista/Windows 7 the updated sound driver works great , I can feel the difference in rear speakers and sub-woofer channels. | |||
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