Columbus and Canton - Surround Sound information which may be useful.

Hello,

So, the manual states:

So this implies to me that I can put a FLAC file on a USB or SD card, plug it in, and then my Columbus system will play the file in 5.1.  Great, I have a collection of 5.1 audio at home so why not rip it and get it working in the car!

I tried it with my Tubular Bells 2003 (ripped to 5.1 FLAC from my own DVD Audio Disc), and it didn't seem (to my ears) to do anything apart from downmix it to stereo.... This annoyed me and I set about trying to find out what settings I needed to get this working properly.  However, the problem was not the system.  It was the PICNIC* who was trying to operate it!

These were my original sound settings:

Canton Optimisation: Front

Canton Surround: 0

Canton Subwoofer: 7

I downloaded some 5.1 test tones from this other forum:

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/multichannel-test-files-flac-with-various-channels-sample-rates.24032/

Popped them on an SD card and trundled out to the car again.

I picked the 192/24 folder and played the Channnel Test 5.1.flac file and to my astonishment, it played on all 5 channels clearly, but the rear channels were really quiet (maybe 2 * quieter than the fronts), so the TB2003 file was playing in surround, its just the fronts were drowning the rears out and so I thought (incorrectly) it was downmixing it. 😖

So I headed in to the sound settings, and started to balance it all out for my cloth ears.

I ended up with the following settings:

Canton Optimisation: Front

Canton Surround: 7

Canton Subwoofer: 8

This is now very balanced for my ears and surround channels are clearly discernable and work in unison when required. 

My mistake was, I assumed that Surround "0" was "normal" surround, and that a +'ve figure would bring the rears up to louder than normal settings (the manual states that -9 is "stereo" and +9 is "full surround")

However, this is correct but the "normal" surround is so quiet I thought it wasn't working.

So ... happy days, all sorted.  But I didn't stop there.  The manual also stated that the following formats should play:

MPEG 2 & 4 (aac, m4p, m4a) at 320kbit/s (48 kHz)

Vorbis (Or ogg as its more commonly known) "defined by the format" (whatever that means)

So I tried them.  I converted my source TB2003 audio to 5.1 Apple Lossless ALAC (m4a) which played perfectly even though the system stated that it would only support m4a at 320kbits and makes no mention of ALAC.

I also tried 5.1 aac (apple vbr) at 320kbits, this also played in 5.1.  I tried Ogg Vorbis, full quality setting which resulted in a file of 1439 kbps, this also played in 5.1 fine.  So you can rip to lossy 5.1 if you so desire and want to save a few MB of space (i'd stick with FLAC or ALAC though personally).

So, I hope this helps even 1 person to save some time and settings when trying to get 5.1 audio working on their car, i've been trying to suss this out on and off for a week or so.

Now I can rip the rest of my DVD / Hires audio collection ready for the car...

Next thing to try is to stop it from pausing between tracks for a brief second without combining it in to one large file... Maybe ALAC will help with that?

Cheers,

Slick2097.

* PICNIC = Problem In Chair, Not In Car / Computer (delete as appropriate)