[Tech] Stereo -> 5.1

[Angelic]

Hoy hoy,
so I got 5.1 speakers for Christmas. However, since most of the audio I have is in stereo only (all my music is in mp3, all my movies in avi (well, mostly)), everything only plays on the front L/R speakers and makes no use of the subwoofer, central and rear L/R.
I know I can't magically add channels to the files unless I run them all through some kind of converter, but I know I should be able to force them play on all my speakers regardless (e.g. right channel would play on front and rear R, same on both, the subwoofer picking up the low bits etc.). So far I've been unable to do this.
I'm running Win 7 64bit, Winamp for music, VLC for movies. My system DOES recognize the sound-card as being 5.1 setup now, with the inbuilt testing interface properly beeping from the speakers it says it's gonna beep.

So my question is, how do I force Winamp and VLC to play the media I have on all my speakers?

Cheers for help, whizz-kids!

Adam

 

[Angelic]

Ehm...ok this was silly. Literally right now I found out how to do it - there's a tab called "Enhancements" under speaker properties in Windows which has "Bass Management" which sends sounds under certain threshold to the 'woofer and another one called "Speaker Fill" which immitates 5.1 from stereo files.

I say this so that others may learn from my mistakes.

Otherwise I'd say delete this silly mistake of mine

 

[Ronin Storm]

Also, some soundcards and outputs allow you to upmix stereo to 5.1. Sure, it's not true 5.1, but it does a fairly good job of fooling you into thinking it is.