CIP Audio Player is a cross-platform Java application which works on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
The CIPAudioPlayer plays back PCM 16Bit/44.1kHz wav-files through the main speakers and center speaker by using different sound-mixer (sound-cards).
As an example you could connect the main and center signal to the pre-inputs (external decoder inputs) of a 5.1 AV-Receiver/Amplifier to apply the signal to the three front speakers (left, center and right).
Why three channels for stereo?
In a normal stereo setup the spot where the stereo image really creates the best sound stage is very small. By calculating a third signal for a center speaker it is possible to enhance the stereo soundstage for more than one listener.
The center signal gets calculated by applying a linear matrix which decodes the left and right stereo channels into the center channel.
The valid range for C (Center-Factor) is -1 to 1, but the CIPAudioPlayer just uses a range of 0 to 1.
Let's calculate the resulting vector by choosing significant values for C:
C=0 -> Lo = Li | Ro = Ri | Co = Li + Ri -> The left and right channels stay untouched, whereas the center channel is the sum of the right and left channels (mono signal).
C=0.5 -> Lo = Li - 0.5 * Ri | Ro = Ri - 0.5 * Li | Co = 0.5 * (Li + Ri) -> The left and right channels get reduced by half of their mono signal, whereas the center channel gets increased by that part of the signal.
C=1 -> Lo = Li - Ri | Ro = Ri - Li | Co = 0 -> The left and right channels are now without any mono signal. The center channel becomes silent.
Useful values for the Center-Factor are around 0.5 - 0.7 which enhances the stereo image just with the right amount of a mono center signal.
Requirements:
ยท Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment
