How to redirect single audio channels to different devices?

I just bought a bluetooth stereo speaker and I had an idea:

Is it possible to build a 4.0 audio system using my Bluetooth speakers as rear speaker and two normal cabled stereo speakers (or another pair of bluetooth speakers) as front? Which program I have to use?

In general: is it possible to split a 4.0 or 5.1 signal in the single channels and send them to multiple devices?

Solution 1:

You can use a package called Jack. What it lets you do is pipe the outputs from the source, into whatever channels on whatever devices you want.

sudo apt-get jack2d jack-tools qjackctl

jack2d: is the more recent version of Jack

jack-tools: more stuff for jack

qjackctl: GUI

After installation use qjackctl to pull up the GUI.

Examples of things you can do with jack;

• Pipe audio from one source to all devices for synced audio.
• Send the Left channel to both channels of a pair of speakers, and the right to a different pair

The possibilities are pretty endless. Here is a picture from the help page for Jack

On the left, you can see your output sources, and on the right are the devices you can output to.

Here is a picture of 3 LR audio sources where 2 of them are pipe to 1 speaker,

and the other source to the other speaker.

Solution 2:

strictly speaking no. a single sound card processes the data synch's all the channels and makes front left x% stronger and rear right x% weaker so that the explosion on the front left of the screen sounds right. or the reverse when a jet flies over from the rear.

you can make a psudo setup but if you want good sound get a proper card and speakers. a well equiped and setup system can sound amaizing. I got an omega sound card for the wifes pc because she watches a lot of dvd's even on the cheezy speakers we have it sounds decent. when I got that omega I was quite suprised how much a difference a good sound card makes. I was used to the creative labs audigy.