Any get any surround sound experience from the Video CD, than the stereo. My player,Sony VX333(having no surround speakers),could produce this. This can be achieved only with Original VCDs of movies from Universal, Tristar, 20th Century Fox ... I used to sit at the centre position and change the mode to "CinemaSpace High". It will be surprising that the sound moves exactly as that i have experienced in a DTS theatre. This is very correct for the scene video. For eg: a horse comming from the rear position to the screen(front). It is like 5.1 surround. How this is achieved in VCD by those people? How this effects are encoded with the stereo streams? Can we achieve this for our VCD projects? Suggestions please....

-- Ajesh NR (ajeshnr@rediffmail.com), January 26, 2004

Answers

I think what is happening is that the component you set to "CinemaSpace High" is artificially creating surround sound. VCD doesn't support any type of surround sound. The only valid audio for VCD is MPEG-1 layer II audio. I know a guy who swore that Dolby Surround, which is an old surround format for (I think) 4 speakers, would work on VCD because Dolby Surround can be encoded in 2 channels, but the problem with that is that as far as I know, MPEG audio can't be encoded to support Dolby Surround. I think Dolby Surround can only be encoded on PCM/WAV audio. SVCD does support surround sound, but the only valid format is MPEG 5.1 multichannel audio. Encoders are available at various places on the Internet, but support for this audio format is not good and many DVD players will only play it in 2 channel mode.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), January 28, 2004.