3 Best Media Players Supporting Surround Sound
Get The Best Surround Sound Experience
A surround sound system is an integral component of any high-end home theater system. With 5.1 surround sound, your audio will have depth and realism, providing a more immersive home entertainment experience.
However, paying top dollar for home theater speakers is not enough. To derive optimal value from your sound system, you also need the right media player. The best media players support, optimize and enhance surround sound to maximize sound quality.
Ideally, the media player you choose should also be easy to integrate with your home theater system.
Today, we will be taking an in-depth look at three of the top options.
Best 5.1 Surround Sound Media Players
1. PowerDVD
CyberLink PowerDVD is an all-in-one media player for Windows with a comprehensive range of features for home entertainment. The media player supports virtually all video, audio, and image file formats, including 8K, HDR, and HEIC/HEIF.
PowerDVD offers everything you need in terms of surround sound support. With WASAPI mode, you can configure your sound system to match the audio source format, ensuring optimal sound quality. Pass-through for Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio eliminates any sound quality loss.
Play any media, including DVD and Blu-ray discs, 360-degree video with dimensional sound. As well as stream YouTube HDR and live content with complete enhanced WebM support.
PowerDVD also includes TrueTheater enhancements. These features offer multi-channel surround sound from any stereo audio. In combination with the Dolby Virtual Speaker, the TrueTheater enhancements provide a 5.1 surround sound experience, even if you listen through headphones.
Even better, media casting support for streaming devices allows you to integrate your PC wirelessly with your home theater system.
For example, you can stream content from your PC to a Roku, Chromecast, or Apple device in the new PowerDVD TV Mode via your Wi-Fi network. PowerDVD automatically converts the media into a format your streaming device supports when casting content to your TV.
The software's TrueTheater technology works with cast media as well—you won't lose any video or audio quality when streaming content.
Key Features
- Support for 8K, Ultra HD Blu-ray, and 360-degree video
- Interface optimization for big-screen TVs
- TV Mode for home entertainment settings
- PC mode for computer viewing
- 21:9 aspect ratio for Blu-ray
Pros
- Support for all major audio, video, and image formats
- TrueTheater technology to optimize sound quality
- Intuitive and responsive interface
- CyberLink app remote for couch navigation
- Free cloud storage for one year
Cons
- Requires high-quality hardware for optimal performance
2. Leawo Blu-ray Player
Leawo Blu-ray Player is another powerful and responsive media player for Windows that can play Blu-ray, DVD, and ISO files. It offers support for several high-end audio decoding technologies, such as Dolby, TrueHD, DTS, and DTS-HD, with multi-channel audio.
Like PowerDVD, this media player can handle the most popular video and audio file formats, including MP3, MP4, DIVX, XVID, M4V, MPEG, WAV, WEBM, and WMA. With a CPU occupation of around 4%, the software lets you multitask without experiencing any lag.
The Leawo Blu-ray Player also has a clean and intuitive user interface. You get full navigation for DVD, video, and Blu-ray playback and can load multiple files to your playlist. Using the playback and navigation controls, you can adjust audio tracks and subtitles or navigate several screen displays.
On the downside, you can't customize the sound output as you can with PowerDVD, and it is far from the most affordable media player out there.
Key Features
- Blu-ray, DVD, and ISO media player for Windows
- Blu-ray to lossless MKV conversion capability
- Audio track and subtitle selection feature
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Audio processing technologies that include DTS-HD and True HD
- Low CPU occupation
- Compatible with most audio and video formats
- Quick Blu-ray loading
Cons
- Relatively high price
- No HD or 3D upscaling
- Ad-supported software
- No output customization
3. KMPlayer
K-Multimedia Player, or KMPlayer, is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Like the other media players on our list, it supports Blu-ray, DVD, and CD playback, along with various file formats, including MP4, AVI, FLV, and MKV, among many others.
You can access and play video clips and audio tracks from your hard drive, removable storage device, or network locations. It offers various customization options that let you personalize every detail of your playback tools.
If your PC supports Intel Wireless Display (WiDi), you can even activate WiDi control and use KMPlayer to play HD videos on your TV.
In terms of surround sound support, the advanced audio processing features you get with this software include an integrated equalizer and ambiance effects. You can personalize audio processing by adjusting Room Size, Width, Mode, Damping, Wet Level, and Dry Level sound effects.
However, all that power comes with lag-inducing high CPU occupation rates not seen in other software with the same capabilities, such as PowerDVD. This media player is also riddled with advertisements.
Key Features
- Compatible with various operating systems
- Supports main file formats
- Built-in codecs with hardware acceleration
- Video downloading feature
- Normalize function to correct sound quality
Pros
- Advanced audio processing features
- Extensive customization options
- Easy library navigation
Cons
- High hardware requirements
- Ad-based software
Download the Best 5.1 Surround Sound Media Player Today
Selecting the right media player will enhance your surround sound system’s output quality significantly, ensuring that you get the best value for your money. The best media players allow you to customize your audio output to match your home theater environment and file format. The result is an immersive sound with sufficient depth and clarity.
In addition to supporting surround sound, your media player should also offer all the features you need for home entertainment. YouTube streaming, TV casting, and remote navigation are just some options to ensure seamless media player integration into your home theater system.
CyberLink PowerDVD meets and exceeds these requirements, making it hands-down the best media player supporting surround sound on the market in 2022.
If you are looking to enhance your speaker system's functionality and output quality, download PowerDVD today.