Re: [mediaqueries4] Media queries for multichannel audio ?

Mark Watson skriver:
> 
> 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).
> 

To clarify, I am not saying that your case is the same as mine. I just
wanted to add a related thing that could be useful to detect. Some
devices simply have limits on the number of sounds they can play at the
same time.

Received on Tuesday, 19 March 2013 17:10:50 UTC