[flac-dev] Define 6.1 and 7.1 channel mappings

[Brian Willoughby]

On Jan 17, 2013, at 21:41, Ralph Giles wrote:
> On 13-01-17 7:26 PM, Brian Willoughby wrote:
>> I vote for documenting the --channel-map option in the --help
>
> Do you ever use --channel-map yourself, or recommend it to clients?


Professional surround mastering is delivered on very specific media,  
and FLAC is not an option (to my knowledge).

I use FLAC for archival of original recordings, and I document the  
channel order along with the other details of the recording. I  
recommend the same practice to anyone. FLAC works best with mono and  
stereo. Only stereo can take advantage of compression options that  
share channels. More than two channels in a FLAC does not really  
offer any space savings beyond what you would get with multiple mono  
FLAC files. But if you do archive 8-channels recordings, you'd be  
well advised to document more than just the channel mapping.

Actually, there's quite a large world of possibilities. There are  
recording devices, archival methods, media exchange standards for  
mastering, and only after all of those stages is there delivery to  
the consumer. I'm not aware of any surround material being delivered  
in FLAC yet, neither to mastering houses or consumers. It seems that  
surround is mostly limited to Dolby Digital, DTS, and is limited to  
DVD and BD (Blu-ray Disc). I have seen some new things popping up,  
but many of them look really ugly in one aspect or another.

Are you aware of FLAC being used apart from recording devices (1 to 8  
channels), archival (multiple mono and stereo), computer audio, or  
consumer stereo audio? It seems that there are two areas where  
surround FLAC could take off (mastering formats and consumer media).

Brian