Here's an answer that I hope covers all the major cases ...
* If you do not have access to each of the 6 speakers individually and only have the ability to access two inputs to a surround-sound
processor (like your home surround
system), then any board will do, since they all have LR outputs, and that's pretty much all you can feed into it.
* If you DO have direct access to each to the six speakers individually, then --
- If you need "surround panning", then one of the digital boards mentioned above is probably your best bet. (the 01v96 is a favorite and is quite powerful)
- If you don't need surround panning but just need the ability to playback a 5.1 audio file and/or DVD, then any sound board with 6 bus outs should do. In this case you'll need an input device such as a DVD player or sound interface with SCS/Q-Lab/
etc, and
channel each of the 6 outputs from your device to six discrete inputs on the board, an the each of the inputs to it's own dedicated output. I did this for a long time on a
Mackie CFX20, using the individual group outs and two auxes as my six outputs. So you will likely need a board that has 4 groups, giving you at least six buses total to work with. And you can continue to mix in other stereo and
mono input sources as well.
* If you have 5.1 surround files to use as input to the
system, then you will need the 6 bus board, surround panning or not.
* However, if you only have stereo input files and want to produce surround sound, then I don't think any sound board will do the processing -- you'll have to get a separate processing
unit (like a home surround receiver
system, or the professional equivalent) or convert the files first using separate software.
- If you are starting with stereo files and would like to convert them to 5.1, there are some programs out there that will do it for you.
I personally have used the V.1 Stereo to Surround converter plug-in (
http://www.stevethomson.ca/vi/) with very good success, and in the small theater I am affiliated with, it does sound pretty good throughout the audience seating