3D - 2

X-Fi CMSS-3D with a 5.1 source?

Say I'm watching Lord of the Rings in HD with AC3 5.1 audio. Do I need to turn CMSS-3D off in my Soundblaster X-Fi Surround USB sound card in order to prevent conflicts between the Creative software trying to upmix an audio signal that is already a surround signal, or does it automatically switch itself off? Or does it only work on stereo sources anyway (as in simply has no effect on a 5.1 source)? Just for the record, listening to the movie with CMSS off does net me true 5.1 surround sound, I do have the proper set up and it's configured properly, it's just a pain to open the software control panel and turn it on and off, since I switch between listening to (stereo) music and watching movies/playing games which support 5.1. Thanks for any insight. Just to add a bit of clarification, I'm currently using Windows 7 and CCCP, set to 3/0/2 + LFE in CCCP FFDShow settings, using Media Player Classic for videos/movies and Winamp for music

Public Comments

1. To be honest, it really depends on the audio codec, some will downmix the 5.1 to stereo. If you're using K-Lite I believe it does it in FFshow and you can just configure it to always use 5.1, and it will output 5.1 to the soundcard (because thats the signal its getting from the codec) the xfi software will only upmix stereo audio sources.