hi,
I tried compressing 6 channel(5.1) and 8 cannel(7.1) audio (.wav) files, it gave some error.
Could U please tell me whether FLAC supports multi-channel audio or not ?
If it supports, Please let me know if I have to make any changes in the settings or in the source code.
I have the lcommand line source code and I am trying to understand it. I found one variable says:

/** The maximum number of channels permitted by the format. */
#define FLAC__MAX_CHANNELS (8u)

But could not exactly locate the places where i should make changes to make it work for multi-channel audio. So if there are some changes to be made in order to have multichannel support, please suggest.

thanks
dls

you could also suggest me if there are other codecs like MAC or wavpack if they support multi-channel audio. I have no idea about other codecs...

See Lossless Comparison Table to check which formats support multi-channel.

I would recommend WavPack, since it's very fast at decoding/encoding, has fast seeking, gives good compression, is open-source and the author David, is a really nice guy, which always is willing to help out if needed, or to answer questions or take feature requests... The WavPack format itself hasen't got any limitations on the number of channels it can handle, but the current implementation of WavPack can handle maximum 8 to 16 channels depending on how they are grouped...

-Martin.

I know for a fact that FLAC supports 5.1, however it does not support all types of 5.1 wav files.

FLAC FAQ: How many channels does FLAC support?

Josh

p.s. FLAC-the-format can support 5.1 and 7.1, it's just that the command-line encoder currently does not parse WAVEFORMATEX wavefiles. if you feed them in as raw files it will work.