That is weird.

My sound system is in storage right now. When I had it setup I did not have any 4.1 music. I may check on some other audio forums to see if 4.1 becomes a problem with channel assignment. I have never encountered any 3.1 music. I have only found the 3.0 on SACD's that were originally RCA Living Stereo LP's.

Looked at it a little bit and It seems, FLAC has defined only these channel assignments in standard:
1 channel: mono
2 channels: left, right
3 channels: left, right, center
4 channels: front left, front right, back left, back right
5 channels: front left, front right, front center, back/surround left, back/surround right
6 channels: front left, front right, front center, LFE, back/surround left, back/surround right
7 channels: front left, front right, front center, LFE, back center, side left, side right
8 channels: front left, front right, front center, LFE, back left, back right, side left, side right

I.e. it officially does not support 2.1, 3.1, 4.1. at all! Weird. I have found out, that sometimes special metdata tag "WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE_CHANNEL_MASK" is used to redefine channel mapping, but it is very unofficial with poor support in decoders.

Sorry for the confusion.

The channel positions are listed somewhere in the flac file header?

As stated in the [url]http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=13879[/url] MMW5 will have to parse the info and determine the correct channel configuration.

I just found it weird that MMW currently decides a 3 channel flac file is 2.1 as opposed to a 3.0. Must be making some assumptions.

There will be some isssues with nomenclature that MMW5 will have to "learn". I have seen files with the surround channels being refered to as both
SL SR and/or BL BR. Not really an issue with 4 and 5 channel audio since they can be interpreted as interchangeable but with 7 channels it would be important.

Not sure where the info comes from to begin with. The various programs that convert SACD, DVD-Audio and Blu-ray audio may decide what is what. Not sure. I have yet to find a program that can actually edit the channel descriptors.

I could see where it would be possible for MMW to provide the little graphical description of the channel configuration as seen on the back cover of various media.

I don't understand, where are the channel positions listed? MM5 cannot list channel positions (and that is why it cannot differentiate between 2.1 and 3.0).

Ok. MMW5 manages to get 5.1 right. Looks like the issue will be addressed.

I did find an additional example of a 3 channel audio file being identified as 2.1. That file was originally 5.0 with blank surround channels which I then exported only the real three channels using Audacity and the original surround channels are still listed --> Channels : 3: FL FR FC BL BR. Correct on number of channels but still lists BL BR. I need to bring that up with the Audacity people.

Problem is, that MM parses and stores only number of channels, not presence of LFE.
Added as http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=13879

MMW5 has fixed most of the issues I reported with MMW4 with respect to reporting the proper number of channels in a flac file.

However there is still a problem with 4.1 channel flac files. There are reported as 5.0

5.1, 5.0 and 4.0 flac files all display the proper number of channels.