I have a Terratec Phase 28 soundcard with eight analog outputs. I?m
putting together a media show for a Planetarium which uses a home
grown VB6 program that: launches Powerpoint (and monitors events),
integrates a Windows Media Player control currently feeding a 5.1
surround sound system and two channels of SMPTE (one redundant), and
hosts an application to output DMX lighting commands to a USB to
Serial interface. The SMPTE must be uncompressed audio, so I am
currently forced to use uncompressed audio on the other six channels. 
I?m using an .AVI eight channel audio file which tips the scales at
around 1.2 gb. I would much rather find a way to simultaneously send a
.WMA 5.1 Surround File (or other compressed media file) to the first
six channels of the soundcard. while sending uncompressed SMPTE
timecode audio to the remaining two channels of the soundcard.

Is it possible to send compressed audio to the channels corresponding
to the 5.1 set-up while delivering uncompressed audio to the remaining
channels? What would the VB6 code look like to accomplish this?

Thanks for your help.