# Question about DVD music

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dvd-music/158744>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 3, 2003, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dvd-music/158744 "2003-03-03T10:46:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2003, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dvd-music/158744/1 "2003-03-03T10:46:14Z")

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I bought some DVD music (‘The Planets’ - Holst). It arrived today (about 10 minutes ago, in fact).

I put it in my DVD player, and played it. I heard the music - this is OK. problem is - it seems to be coming from 2 speakers.

The main reason I bought a music _DVD_ was to take advantage of the 5.1 music speakers I have. I played around with the settings a little and set the audio on my DVD player to 5.1 instead of ‘Enable sp/diff output’ (which is what it was on). this caused the music to come out of all 5 speakers. Trouble is - the sound card software causes all music to come out of 5 speakers in the event that it is only stereo.

Question - by selecting 5.1 in the DVD audio options am I utilizing the 5.1 sound of the DVD? or am I just telling the software to play the same at the back as is being played at the front?  
I am very tired so I am sure none of that makes much sense. please try to extract some sense from it and figure out what I mean. Thanlks…