A method and apparatus for preserving matrix-surround information in encoded audio/video includes a receiver operative to receive matrix-surround encoded audio signals via a modem, separate the audio signals into a frequency spectrum having discrete audio frequencies, and determine a cutoff threshold used to encode the matrix-surround encoded audio signals. The method and apparatus further includes a decoder operative to decode a first set of the audio frequencies below the determined cutoff threshold using a first matrix-surround preserving audio encoding method and to decode a second set of audio frequencies above the cutoff threshold using a second non matrix-surround preserving audio encoding method.