Systems and methods for providing multi-channel audio using a reduced amount of resources for the decoding process. A 5.1 channel audio stream is divided into three stereo streams. The packets from each of three stereo streams are multiplexed to create a pseudo-5.1 channel audio stream. The pseudo 5.1 channel audio stream is then decoded and demultiplexed at the output to create the output 5.1 channel audio sound. As such, the decoder resources only have decode a single pseudo 5.1 stream. This technique is equally applicable to 7.1 or other multi-channel formats.