[geeks] Audio Channel Identification

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, Doug McLaren wrote:

> |   I need to hook a subwoofer to my video editing rig, and I can't tell
> | which output is for the sub.  There's an output labeled
> | "Center/Subwoofer" in the manual, but I don't know if the "right
> | channel" side of the stereo pin is the sub, or if it's the "left
> | channel" side.
>
> Just fire up your favorite mp3 player and play with the balance
> control -- all the way left = signal comes out of the left speaker if
> all is set up properly.
>
> Or have I misunderstood the problem?

I've never seen one with 4 axes (he has a 7.1 setup).

Sridhar's problem (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that he has
one "stereo" output connector on his receiver that is shared between two
mono outputs (center and sub) that are part of a multichannel audio
configuration, and he doesn't know which of the two channels -on that
connector- is center and which is sub.

So he has a computer, some number of channels to a receiver (probably 7:
left front, right front, left rear, right rear, left presence, right
presence, and center), and the receiver has a crossover with a 60Hz or
90Hz cutoff that sends the audio information below that to a shared
subwoofer channel.

Chances are there is no "this is your subwoofer" channel on the PC--that
magic tends to happen in the receiver, so plugging some random speaker
into that jack isn't terribly useful.

In my case, my receiver has such a diagnostic function (and dedicated
outputs for each channel) to reduce that sort of confusion.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke     )  "So far, 99% of illegal activity has been caused
Elgin, TX            (    by criminals."
USA                   )                                    --David Willis