Getting 5.1 surround in Flash?

Hi all,

I'm wondering if it's possible to send audio out of Flash in 5.1 surround (sounds, music etc.)?

What I need is something that can externally send surround sound info to an external amp / surround speakers out of Flash. It would need to be external as Flash itself does not have the capacity for sound output beyond two-channel stereo.

The only 5.1 audio files that can be run on Mac or PC, other than uncompressed wav/aiff files, are 5.1 AAC files that are contained within QuickTime movies (Apple's trailers page has some examples).

It's easy to externally stream MP3s in Flash, but is there any ActionScript that will allow you to externally stream other file types, such as this? Importing them into Flash does not work - so can this be streamed with the QuickTime engine instead?

Sorry, I know it's a tricky one and there really doesn't seem to be any solutions out there. But it must be possible, I'd think it a bit silly if it weren't (especially since so many computers have 5.1 capacity these days).

Thank you for your time...

As you point out, the native sound features of Flash only support stereo, not surround.

I your application would only be possible if you use Flash as a standalone application, not a web application, and Flash would only be a front end to control another audio system supporting the audio features you need. You would not use Flash for sound at all.

A standalone/projector type of application would be a Flash player bundled with your 3rd party surround sound solution. People would download this and install on their system.

You might ask more in the standalone projector forum regarding how to integrate Flash with a surround sound system.

Ah fantastic. I will do that shortly.

As it happens, I will be needing it for a stand alone projector and not web-based. Not to mention the bandwidth/webspace required for this kind of thing online would be massive.

You mention I would not use Flash for sound at all. Does this mean I wouldn't be able to activate sounds (in 5.1) from loading scenes, clicking buttons etc. at all?

I will ask on the projector forum too. Many thanks.

fscommands are the intended interface for sending commands from Flash to another application. Flash can only send data, not receive data, through fscommands.

Another approach would be to create an XML socket server to receive XML formatted data from Flash and return XML formatted data to Flash. This would be two way communication.

Perfect. Thank you :mrt:

I'm not sure how useful this approach would be, but at least it might be some useful resource material:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=19260

These guys wanted to send AC3 5.1 files through a SqueezeBox (a Wi-Fi receiver for sending computer audio to a stereo). They have a utility that encapsulates the AC3 file in a WAV file. When the SqueezeBox tries to output the stereo left and right signals, they would be all garbled, but they run the SPDIF output into a home theater that understands 5.1 signals and they get their six channels.

I'm not sure this would be applicable to the Flash situation, but I wanted to pass on this good resource, just in case.