Does the web client/player always perform "client-side" stereo downmix?

[tomty89]

By client-side I mean has a "downmixing engine" been built into the web player itself? When I play some 5.1 FLAC ("containerless", audio-only), it seems that browsers (Firefox and Chromium) output stereo streams (as per pactl list sink-inputs).

When I test with the official android app (on a phone connected to the Apple USB-C audio dongle -- stereo only), if I choose Web player as the playback engine, it sounds that it produces different downmix from what is produced when Integrated player. (I suppose the latter is letting AudioFlinger whatsoever do the downmix. In neither case did the downmixing seem to be done on the server-side -- no ffmpeg instance was running.)

If so, is the "engine" like only used for ("containerless") FLAC and a few other formats/codecs but not some others?

Just curious. Not exactly try to "solve" anything.

[thornbill]

Playback is handled by the browser engine. The web client does not do any downmixing or other processing of media.

[tomty89]

Yeah shortly after posting this I realize that's probably gonna be the answer. Kinda sad that browsers do that kind of things from a "modern" perspective.

[Dnkhatri]

If you are using chrome you can try running it with this flag --try-supported-channel-layouts