A usecase that I see for something like he wants to do is if you want special masters of SACDs, Blurays and 4k blurays with a higher dynamic range or if something is exclusive to physical formats.
Sure just go ahead and rip the disc on a computer and let a software player handle the multichannel pcm streams or let it get downsampled to 2.0 for headphones or whatever..
Roon lets you do downsampling and I believe channel mapping is possible.
And that's all nice for local audio playback but if this is for movie playback where you just want to play a movie, have everything lipsync and "just work" it's kinda nuts do to this instead of just using a AV receiver.
Especially if this is a workaround to make Do with hardware that is not really ideal for this to begin with.
What you need is a AV receiver where you are not going to use the amplifier in there or a AV processor.. but those are usually more expensive than AV receivers...
A 5.1 Genelec system will be expensive and a Atmos system even more so. Where you will still need a AV receiver.
I get that. I’m just fantasizing I guess lol I already genelec 8030c which I got for $900 cash the pair from a local guy who bought them from sweetwater 3 months before
Buying 3 more of those assuming I pay the regular price would run me $2085 lol
Thats without the subwoofer which I don’t have yet lol
Then a good receiver
So far having the genelec allows me to do several things like use it for guitar movies games music etc so it made sense
Also $900 with no tax for a barely used pair is bargain when they cost $1400. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity
Before Genelec I had a cheap $45 soundbar from Taotronics lol below my computer monitor, so it was a big step up