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authorwm4 <wm4@nowhere>2014-12-15 17:14:23 +0100
committerwm4 <wm4@nowhere>2014-12-15 17:14:23 +0100
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parent49df01323e59526de8ba9d140a0663dd6890586b (diff)
downloadmpv-af3bbb800d709f81c9f30bc4ced26c98ea5eafd6.tar.bz2
mpv-af3bbb800d709f81c9f30bc4ced26c98ea5eafd6.tar.xz
audio: make native channel count the default instead of stereo downmix
This should work well with most audio APIs, except ALSA. A long-winded explanation is provided how to make ALSA multichannel output work. All other AOs should have no such problems. Of course it's possible that previously unknown issues arise, because I assume that enabling multichannel audio is actually relatively rare. This also disables codec downmix by default, which could change the audio output due to different mixing in the codec and libavresample. Fixes #1313.
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@@ -68,6 +68,36 @@ Available audio output drivers are:
shells (like zsh), you have to quote the option string to prevent the
shell from interpreting the brackets instead of passing them to mpv.
+ Actually, you should use the ``--audio-device`` option, instead of
+ setting the device directly.
+
+ .. warning::
+
+ Handling of multichannel/surround audio changed in mpv 0.8.0 from the
+ behavior in MPlayer/mplayer2 and older versions of mpv.
+
+ The old behavior is that the player always downmixed to stereo by
+ default. The ``--audio-channels`` (or ``--channels`` before that) option
+ had to be set to get multichannel audio. Then playing stereo would
+ use the ``default`` device (which typically allows multiple programs
+ to play audio at the same time via dmix), while playing anything with
+ more channels would open one of the hardware devices, e.g. via the
+ ``surround51`` alias (typically with exclusive access). Whether the
+ player would use exclusive access or not would depend on the file
+ being played.
+
+ The new behavior since mpv 0.8.0 always enables multichannel audio,
+ i.e. ``--audio-channels=auto`` is the default. However, since ALSA
+ provides no good way to play multichannel audio in a non-exclusive
+ way (without blocking other applications from using audio), the player
+ is restricted to the capabilities of the ``default`` device by default,
+ which means it supports only stereo and mono. But if a hardware device
+ is selected, then multichannel audio will typically work.
+
+ The short story is: if you want multichannel audio with ALSA, use
+ ``--audio-device`` to select the device (use ``--audio-device=help``
+ to get a list of all devices and their mpv name).
+
``oss``
OSS audio output driver