Particularly for the Gentooists out there..... I downloaded and installed Roger Klaveness' Java ambisonics _player_ (not a plugin!) on Gentoo Linux for AMD64 according to Roger's very complete instructions: http://klaveness.info/roger/ambplay/ (Since the recommended Sun JDK 1.5 is not yet available for regular installation on Gentoo, I used the alternate axxo overlay, which installs dev-java/sun-jdk-1.5.0.05-r1along side the blackdown-jdk-1.4 default.) This alpha project already offers more than just the basics of an excellent, open source, cross-platform ambisonic player. It is known to work on Windows XP as well as Gentoo Linux. It plays 4 channel (b-format) flacs, as well as a wide variety of higher order Ambisonic and binaural material in several file formats. Memory and CPU usage is very reasonable while uncompressing and playing 4 channel flacs. This is real SURROUND sound, not 5.1 movie sound effects. The player decodes to as many as 12 speakers including some on the vertical axis. The success of this player has created a problem for me, however. I normally feed the S/PDIF output of my RME Digi96 PAD into my Panasonic SA-XR70 digital receiver. Now I need to feed at least four channels, not just a stereo pair, to the receiver, which has HDMI inputs for multi-channel for DVD-Audio players. (Ever heard of a sound card with an HDMI output?) My current theory is that I need to use the ADAT 8 channel output of the Digi96 to feed some sort of external converter that will make a 4 channel MPEG2, DTS or AC3 feed into a single S/PDIF or Toslink cable for me, since I don't want to go to analog only to be converted to digital again to feed the Panasonic's digital power amps. Does anyone in Linuxland know an elegant way to solve this problem? John
