Multichannel MME audio

I recently bought the 44VSL and quite like it so far. Only I have not yet been able to play multichannel sound from a non-recording program (let's say from VLC media player or something comparable). As far as I can see the standard Windows (MME) driver only supports 2 output (and 2 input) channels. Does anyone know a solution to get all 4 channels available in Windows?

If such a thing is not available in the standard Presonus driver I can imagine some sort of 'virtual surround card driver' that is able to reroute audio to the 4 outputs of my AudioBox, but I haven't been able to find that yet...

Your suggestions will be really appreciated.

I'm not for certain if VLC will do it but you could try using ASIO4All.

What's a VLC?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 20/12/2011 07:02:21

A pretty much everything under the sun video/audio player for windows.

Nice little program for event and conference work. I use it all the time. Never know what someone's gonna hand you to be presented.

Monolithent wrote:A pretty much everything under the sun video/audio player for windows.

Nice little program for event and conference work. I use it all the time. Never know what someone's gonna hand you to be presented.

And Linux.

It also has more features like video capture and stuff like that.

Good point. I don't have any Linux systems so I didn't think of it.

Thanks for all the response, I will continue looking at ASIO4All. (So far it did not work...)
But no one of you has managed to get all the in and outputs available without using the ASIO driver? It would of course also be nice to be able to record all channels in non-ASIO software.

For the bulk of us that use these devices we only need WDM ASIO or Core Audio.

In all the years I've been handling audio work I've never needed to use MME. That's probably why you don't get a lot of answers.

Ok, I guess that I have been juggling a bit with driver types and names. As I understand it now the AB 44VSL comes out of the box with an ASIO driver (4x4) and a WDM driver (2x2). That would change my question to: can I also use the other 2 in- and output channels with WDM, for instance for use with a program like VLC?
I'm now going through the ASIO4All manual. I'll let you know when something useful comes out.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 20/12/2011 22:13:07

If you are trying to stream multichannel audio such as ac-3 go ahead and get a m-audio fast track pro, they support ac-3 pass through on the spdif output. I asked presonus to implement this for the firebox ages ago......not gonna happen, its a shame specially if you have one of there audiobox's with more outputs, the spdif is only stereo

p.s. I don't think VLC supports ASIO, but there are many choices when you look under preferences/audio/advanced, so if you chose your 44 for your output see how many outputs show up and let us know!!!

Sorry for the above, just realized the 44 doesn't even have spdif.

Only ESI and RME interfaces can do this.

It has been a while since the last post in this discussion, but in the meantime I have made some progress. It actually appeared to be pretty simple:
To get surround sound (that is quadraphonic since the VSL44 only has 4 analog outputs) you should go to the Windows control panel, click the VSL and press configure. There you have the option Quadraphonic! The moment I picked that option my surround sound was working again. (The precise button names are a bit of a guess since i'm not on an English Windows machine, but it shouldn't differ too much.)
Thanks again for all your input and hopefully this solution can be of help for someone else too.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 27/05/2014 16:03:28

Bringing this up as I have a similar question, but the other way around:

Is it possible to access the 4 inputs of the Audiobox 44VSL using MME? i.e./ does it show up as two stereo or 4 mono sources in the windows source select? The audio logging software I'm using doesn't support ASIO (or WASAPI).

Many thanks to anyone who can try answer this, as I'm waiting on the answer to make a purchase.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 27/05/2014 17:45:03

Is it possible to access the 4 inputs of the Audiobox 44VSL using MME?

No.

MME:
The standard Windows MME (Multi Media Extensions) sound interface has been around since Windows 3.1. It supports up to two channels of recording, sample depths up to 16 bits, and sample rates up to 44100Hz. On playback, multiple applications can use the sound device at the same time, with all the audio being mixed and sample rate converted to 44100Hz in Windows before being sent to the sound card. Nice and simple for going ping and utterly hopeless for multi-channel music production.