PC based digital crossover with dolby digital live

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It should work as long as your soundcard allows you to assign the input and outputs. The latency issue can be overcome with a pci e soundcard or a firewire card. But I know that there can be issues depending on the units you choose. you should be able to assign the inputs and outputs and hook up a sacrificial driver to the amp just to see if you are getting the correct output signal. Try using a HiVi B3n driver. They only cost about 12 bucks and will play enough of the full signal to tell you if you are getting bass, mid, or treble signal. What do you think?

What about dts and ac3 decoding? How are you accomplishing that?
 
I've been working on this sort of setup for some time now.

I initially started by using an audigy zs card, i now have two of these on standby just in case and have currently installed an Audiotrak prodigy 7.1 hifi.

Has anyone been able to set up an active crossover system using two internally rewireable cards for 7.1 surround sound but using one card to run the mids and another for the tweeters?

My reasoning behind this is its is a lot cheaper to buy two 7.1 cards than it is to go all out with a high end firewire sound setup with a squillion outputs.

also I'd like to point out that so far this is probably not the best way to do things if you are a gamer. I've found that there is quite a bit of sound delay while gaming. This of course can be corrected for video by introducing a video delay in media player classic or similar products, for music it doesn't matter but for games there is no way to delay the video which of course you wouldn't want to anyway.

I would also say be careful of windows 7 I've found that in some instances e.g. with the prodigy cards that windows 7 does no play well as the manufacturer has messed up the drivers.

This is not really for gamers at all. In fact any audio or video processing is bad news if you are an online gamer. Your scores will go down if you are playing at that "twitch" level. I have a friend who notices a difference based on who's hosting.
 
If you have an extra pc you can pipe the audio into it with a digital input then assign and manipulate the signal on that machine. Use the gaming on a different computer with a better video card.

I've heard of people using one PC strictly for audio. It seems a cleaner approach as far as audio related crashes are concerned. It works for me just fine.

I do gaming and use completely active crossovers on my speakers. I just have not finished the system out with surround though. My specs say it will work just fine when I get around to it.
 
This is not really for gamers at all. In fact any audio or video processing is bad news if you are an online gamer. Your scores will go down if you are playing at that "twitch" level. I have a friend who notices a difference based on who's hosting.

Absolutely, Ideally you would seperate the audio processing to a different box, low end graphics, decent processor, not a lot of ram, quiet even possibly underclocked with minimal fans.

If you have an extra pc you can pipe the audio into it with a digital input then assign and manipulate the signal on that machine. Use the gaming on a different computer with a better video card.

I've heard of people using one PC strictly for audio. It seems a cleaner approach as far as audio related crashes are concerned. It works for me just fine.

I do gaming and use completely active crossovers on my speakers. I just have not finished the system out with surround though. My specs say it will work just fine when I get around to it.

This will be my final stage, spdif out of gaming / video / audio machine and use the machine i'm working on as active crossover , convolver, file server and dac.


btw as i'm currently experiencing quite a few issues using the audiotrax prodigy and the audigy zs dont have rewire i.e. cant really use vst plugins etc effectively. Can anyone recommend a decent but not too expensive sound card with spdif in and out, 7.1, time clock sync between 2 cards, rewire/ directwire capabilities and native asio? (not asking for much am I ? :) )
 
I'll probably need 16 channels in total.

2 subs, and each speaker will consist of a tweeter and mid. Amplification in up in the air at the moment, its a toss up between dual 7.1. av amps with pro audio amp for subs, or class d gear built into a unique chasis. 14.2 amplifier sounds nice :D
 
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@Oublie, check out the Asus Xonar range. ...

Does this allow you to rewire internally i.e. pass the relevant signal through asio using vst plugins in console?
I couldn't find any info on any of the cards that would do it also can two of their cards be used and controlled. the d2x card looks interesing. It seems to have lfe control though.

My system as it stands uses the following (only 2.1 so far)

Foobar / media player classic with delay for video

console -> band pass for mids, high pass for tweeters, Low pass for subs. all with linear phase each speaker set will eventually get its own convolution.

Audiotrak prodigy hifi with wdm output routed to asio input and wdm muted.

currently on the card

outputs 1 and 2 are the mids
outputs 3 and 4 are the tweeters
output 5 is the sub

a lot of work still to do but so far it has allowed me to do a lot of tweaking with the crossovers.

Speakers are 20X 4" mids for front left and right in a line array currently building line array electrostatic tweeters to go with these but temporarily using 1" dome tweeters.

centre, side and surround will be 8X mids in line array with electrostatic tweeters.

subs are twin 20hz tapped horns.
 
I don't know if you can run 2, I thought all soundcards could bypass AISO. Sorry no help here.

Is the software side working out well? Any screenshots.

For my new digital ION system, the software seems the major stumbling block. Im used to Mac's and reluctant to return to excel/dos crude windows software, does Foobar do it all?

For all video content on the Mac i use Plex, which is almost faultless, XBMC is the original windows counterpart and is also very very good. If the system can integrate with these i'm sold.

Would love to see some pictures of your build, sounds impressive!
 
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Hi folks!

I have an external EMU0404 and an internal 7.1 soundcard. I was wondering if is there any way such as I could route the digital crossover result to two differents soundcards.

What I want to do is send the sub-mids trough the external emu (via usb or optical from the internal card) and the highs through the internal one. Or maybe using 2 external emu's. I am going bi-amped, not tri-amped.

The bad thing is that foobar only allow me to choose one card at a time. Thanks for all
 
Joining two soundcards requires synchronizing their clocks, either via SPDIF/wordclock input, or wiring the clock signals, such as in http://quicktoots.linuxaudio.org/toots/el-cheapo/

The same holds for the independent PC xover with separate cards for SPDIF input (clock source) and output (must be slaved to the incoming rate), unless some sort of asynchronous rate conversion takes place in SW (such as in linux pulseaudio or netjack).
 
Absolutely, Ideally you would seperate the audio processing to a different box, low end graphics, decent processor, not a lot of ram, quiet even possibly underclocked with minimal fans.



This will be my final stage, spdif out of gaming / video / audio machine and use the machine i'm working on as active crossover , convolver, file server and dac.


btw as i'm currently experiencing quite a few issues using the audiotrax prodigy and the audigy zs dont have rewire i.e. cant really use vst plugins etc effectively. Can anyone recommend a decent but not too expensive sound card with spdif in and out, 7.1, time clock sync between 2 cards, rewire/ directwire capabilities and native asio? (not asking for much am I ? :) )


I would go with a higher quality pro oriented sound card. This would probably be a firewire interface box. I know it isn't cheap but the drivers of say an RME multiface 2 are outstanding-rock solid.

I have used the M-audio profire 610 with some success. You absolutely must use a TI chipset firewire card though. :mad:They crash regularly without it.

I've also hear of people having success with the Echo Audio AudioFire 12. This one can be picked up for around 600.00 at musicians friend. I'm looking at it myself and have heard some good things.:devily:
 
Hi folks!

I have an external EMU0404 and an internal 7.1 soundcard. I was wondering if is there any way such as I could route the digital crossover result to two differents soundcards.

What I want to do is send the sub-mids trough the external emu (via usb or optical from the internal card) and the highs through the internal one. Or maybe using 2 external emu's. I am going bi-amped, not tri-amped.

The bad thing is that foobar only allow me to choose one card at a time. Thanks for all

try virtual audio cable and audio repeater. this will install a sort of "virtual sound card" you would then set up foobar with vac cable 1 as output.

Start two instances of audio repeater, one for each sound card - the input being vac the output set to whichever sound card you are routing to.

as for crossover etc not too sure on that one but i could be done using twin audigy zs type cards with the kx drivers which have bundles 2nd order, 4th order crossovers and a number of other tweaks.

I think this is how you do it, its been a while.
 
Hi folks!

I have an external EMU0404 and an internal 7.1 soundcard. I was wondering if is there any way such as I could route the digital crossover result to two differents soundcards.

What I want to do is send the sub-mids trough the external emu (via usb or optical from the internal card) and the highs through the internal one. Or maybe using 2 external emu's. I am going bi-amped, not tri-amped.

The bad thing is that foobar only allow me to choose one card at a time. Thanks for all

You need a xover software program. Or this page explains the how and why.

This takes you to another crossover website. I think the product you might want is the "allocator light". It doesn't use a ton of resources. This is what I use for gaming and movie playback.

You can run multiple instances of this program at once and tap each input output to the asio device of your choice.

Caveat? Your soundcard must have internal routing. And you have to be able to take a digital signal at input (possibly from another soundcard) or internal routed from the computer with plugins.
 
Joining two soundcards requires synchronizing their clocks, either via SPDIF/wordclock input, or wiring the clock signals, such as in http://quicktoots.linuxaudio.org/toots/el-cheapo/

The same holds for the independent PC xover with separate cards for SPDIF input (clock source) and output (must be slaved to the incoming rate), unless some sort of asynchronous rate conversion takes place in SW (such as in linux pulseaudio or netjack).

Nice idea,

and I agree sync would most likely be necessary of course if using the first card for front and second card for back might achieve this as it is necessary to introduce a certain amount of delay.

Alternatively i suppose i could use 2 computers same specs each running one card and fed via spdif input. Then just pull whatever data is necessary off the relevant input channels xover it and feed to the relevant outputs.

Don't know if this would work though.
 
Nice idea,

and I agree sync would most likely be necessary of course if using the first card for front and second card for back might achieve this as it is necessary to introduce a certain amount of delay.

Alternatively i suppose i could use 2 computers same specs each running one card and fed via spdif input. Then just pull whatever data is necessary off the relevant input channels xover it and feed to the relevant outputs.

Don't know if this would work though.


You are right! the delays are set within the xover software. I set my delays for each individual driver as well for time coherence. The same can be done for surrounds within the program.
 
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