[Ghitulescu]

I belong to the school of thought that hardware players MUST be entrusted with playing files. Whereas computers only to proces the raw files to feed the former.

My lifetime experience showed me that people that entrust their work to software players do not benefit from the high quality of standalones and are forced to reencode the files every time the software player is changed. I ahd to do this only when the (industry) standards changed (they allow for one generation "legacy" - eg DVD players could play VCDs, BD players could play DVDs (but no VCDs) and so on).

For me it is very important to stay within indsutry standards. And one workaround (thanks again Tebasuna) is to add muted channels where the HW players expect them.