Re: [mediaqueries4] Media queries for multichannel audio ?

On Mar 19, 2013, at 9:42 AM, Henrik Andersson wrote:

> Mark Watson skriver:
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> Has there been any dissuasion of media queries for audio media ?
>> 
>> Specifically, I am interested in discovering whether the attached audio device supports multi-channel audio (5.1, 7.1 etc.) so that I can choose an appropriate resource.
>> 
>> I believe it would be sufficient to have a 'channel count' property which is just an integer count of the number of audio channels supported by the output device.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Mark Watson
>> 
>> 
> 
> I'd like to add that it could be useful to know if there is a limit to
> the number of mixer channels available. Some platforms use hardware
> mixers that have a limited amount of channels.

Actually, I am interested in the number of physical speakers - or more specifically the number of channels actually output from the device.

I have a multichannel stream and a professionally downmixed stereo stream and if there are only two output channels I'd rather provide the stereo stream than have the device do its own downmixing.

I distinguish between the number of physical speakers and the number of output channels because there are setups where the audio output is making proper use of the 6 output channels but has less than 6 speakers (for example soundbars, where there is audio processing which tries to simulate the effect of surround speakers using phase manipulations etc.). I consider those setups as having 6 output channels. But if the device is doing straight downmixing to stereo, I'd rather provide the professional stereo stream (which is also less bandwidth).

…Mark 

> 

Received on Tuesday, 19 March 2013 16:58:25 UTC