I have an older receiver which has a 5.1 WMA Pro 9 decoder on board

would like to feed it 768kbps WMA Pro 9 5.1

BUT I can't find anyway in Vista to encode it as WMA v 9.1

my only options in Vista seem to be (using the MS Encoder)

(1) WMA Pro 10 (when I can use VBR98 5.1 channel) - BUT if you play WMA Pro 10 on a WMA Pro 9 decoder - it only uses half the bits

(2) WMA Pro 9 lossless (which my receiver doesn't support)

so how can you use the VBR non-lossless multichannel encoder options, for WMA Pro 9 in vista please ?

thanks for any help

The half the bits thing is true for what you're doing. I think you can just use Pro 10.

WMA 10 Pro comes with Windows Media Player 11. It is installed by default in Vista, or if you install WMP 11 on XP.

Looks like you might be able to use dBpoweramp with the old Windows Media Audio 9 Pro plugin:
dBpoweramp Codec Central: Windows Media Audio

Dunno if dBpoweramp supports multichannel encoding.

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Is it not playing? Your vintage WMA Pro 5.1 capable receiver should be able to play normal WMA Pro 5.1 content at full quality, even using the current codec releases. You aren't using any of the low bandwidth/streaming enhancements in your use case.

You have a 'older receiver' which has a 5.1 WMA Pro 9 v 9.1 decoder???? when did this happen? what make is it? how much it cost?

microsoft make reference to such devices? is it sp/dif? from pc? or standalone player/amp? ive been using wma pro 9.1 and v10 for a while now..
shame about no lossless...
point being is that some while ago i was able to put a dvd quality movie plus surround audio onto a standard CD ..it played back using media player
on pc..a thought occured to me was that some standalone player(s) play wma files (stereo)and even some mobile phones play wmv video
it seemed obvious to me that a standalone player playing wmv/wma pro 5.1 would be intresting at least and be better competition to dolby and divx avi muxed with ac3 audio which can be quite big..added to that are the multichannel audio converts..sacd, dvd audio etc..sure, lossy may not be as good as lossless eg mlp, flac and wma pro lossless but in terms of storage and transmission it suffices...actually can you tell the difference between lossy and lossless in playback? even at 96/24 ?? does it sound better..ive got same tracks in 96/24 in flac,ogg,wma pro lossy , wma pro lossless,wav,mlp can you tell the diferrence? btw anyone seen a dts 96/24 encoder going cheap like reeeeelly cheap if ya no wot i mean..?

sorry gents - for some reason I didn't get any emails to notify me of replies

to answer a few questions the amp is a Pioneer AX10Ai-S (or 59TXi in the US)

http://www.pioneer.eu/files/brochures/04_H..._HE_AX10_EN.pdf

the advantage of wanting to use WMA Pro is its potentially a good way to encode multichannel PCM sources to a format that is near lossless to the amp ... as the Pioneer supports WMA 5.1 in 96khz

the amp also supports 8 channel USB (!!) - which is a lot less faff - but restricted to 48khz

I wonder whether WMA Pro 10 - at max bitrate really does get half its bits thrown away or not - no real yway to test unless it sounds rubbish I suppose

and the reason I've ended up with this more vintage amplifier is I wanted quality - and the new amps in my price-range just didn't cut the mustard

I went from a Pioneer 45TX (2011) - which was superb (I had for 3 years), to an Arcam AVR350 (amazing in a lot of respects but somehow struggled with movies)

I thought I'd try the new HD compatible amps - so went to a Yamaha RX-V3800 (very disappointed) to a Pioneer VSX-SC05 (extremely disappointed). Sold both of those and found a 2nd hand AX10Ai - for 1/2 the cost of any of these new amps and it blows them away