"Multichannel" can be used to mean at least two different things. The Squeezebox world will work with lossy multichannel files when they are DTS or AC-3/Dolby Digital wrapped in a FLAC container. Basically, if it's the kind of soundtrack you would find on a DVD-Video, it can be made to work with an actual hardware Squeezebox or most (any?) of the non-Logitech alternatives. When the DTS or AC-3 streams are "wrapped" in FLAC, they look like vanilla stereo files to everything except the appropriate decoders. Neither LMS nor a Squeezebox have the slightest idea that they're dealing with anything out of the ordinary.
Unfortunately, Squeezeland doesn't work with lossless multichannel FLAC, i.e., the type of audio you might find on a Blu-ray or a DVD-A. While some of the alternative hardware will work with those files via HDMI, LMS doesn't like them. I've asked about this from time to time over the years and been told that too much of the underlying code is explicitly written to work with 2-channel and 1-channel files.
While I completely sympathize with your desire to play the fancy stuff via the LMS architecture (I'd pay big bucks to get it to happen!), at this point it just can't be done. After the Touch came out, I nursed a fantasy involving the next generation of players having HDMI outputs and a love of 5.1, but it was not to be.
Presumably someone with a lot of time, patience and knowledge could make the necessary changes to LMS (hey, it works with DSD now!), but I have to believe that if it were easy to pull off it would have been done by now. It's also possible that there are two camps: People who'd love it to happen but have no clue how to help (I'm in that one!) and people who might be able to code it but have no interest.
On a slightly different note, I wish DSD could be output via HDMI without using DoP...that is, whatever technique is used by players like the Oppo to send DSD to legacy equipment that works with DSD but not with DoP. Again, I assume that's a huge task or it would already have been done. (Or it already works but I just haven't figured out the magic settings...)
Unfortunately, Squeezeland doesn't work with lossless multichannel FLAC, i.e., the type of audio you might find on a Blu-ray or a DVD-A. While some of the alternative hardware will work with those files via HDMI, LMS doesn't like them. I've asked about this from time to time over the years and been told that too much of the underlying code is explicitly written to work with 2-channel and 1-channel files.
While I completely sympathize with your desire to play the fancy stuff via the LMS architecture (I'd pay big bucks to get it to happen!), at this point it just can't be done. After the Touch came out, I nursed a fantasy involving the next generation of players having HDMI outputs and a love of 5.1, but it was not to be.
Presumably someone with a lot of time, patience and knowledge could make the necessary changes to LMS (hey, it works with DSD now!), but I have to believe that if it were easy to pull off it would have been done by now. It's also possible that there are two camps: People who'd love it to happen but have no clue how to help (I'm in that one!) and people who might be able to code it but have no interest.
On a slightly different note, I wish DSD could be output via HDMI without using DoP...that is, whatever technique is used by players like the Oppo to send DSD to legacy equipment that works with DSD but not with DoP. Again, I assume that's a huge task or it would already have been done. (Or it already works but I just haven't figured out the magic settings...)
(No doubt someone is using GPIO25 for something else, but I suspect for most people it is a sane default.)
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