Downmixing

As downmix a manual or automatic method is referred to in the field of audio engineering, in which the sound of a multi-channel sound format is summarized in a version with fewer independent channels. In most cases this is a stereo version.

This includes all directional information, which are present in the configuration with multiple speakers ( especially, of course, the most widely used front-back dimension), partly lost.

Necessary is a downmix when a multi-channel exclusively present sound is output on a display system that a smaller number of speakers has than the original.

A typical example is the playback of a multichannel audio from DVD on a stereo TV.