how to make a 4 channel USB to Audio sound card/dac

[Joseph R]

Hi,

I want to build or buy a little usb to audio module/kit that can handle 2 stereo channels.
I know that simple solutions like a pcm2706 can do 1 stereo channel but is it possible to plug a second one on the same pc and then have 2 stereo channels?
Can the pc handle it?

Does there exist other chips or kits that can do it?
Thanks

 

[qusp]

yes well at least you can do it on mac, depends on your operating system

 

[Joseph R]

yes well at least you can do it on mac, depends on your operating system

Does someone now if this would also work on windows systems?

 

[wwenze]

Does someone now if this would also work on windows systems?

I've been trying to find that... but no answer. It seems that in Windows you're only allowed to use one device in one program at any one time.

And that this company has a custom driver to combine many of their devices into a single multichannel device supports that hypothesis.

What I'm trying to find, is a driver that functions like that, with the ability to custom route surround channels onto different 2-channel devices, and maybe by faking a 5.1 sound card, allow Dolby Digital Live output on SPDIF.

 

[rrrremus]

You can have that under Linux.
Under Windows i only know of audio players like foobar that have plug-ins that allow you to use a separate sound card for "rear channels" but you cannot use this for other applications.
I have seen sound cards ( Creative i think ) that output Front and Rear as two separate stereo SPDIF strems. This may help if you want to use SPDIF input on your DACs.

 

[qusp]

sorry cant help you there, but I would expect it does have this functionality somewhere. perhaps google will be your friend here.

on mac its called creating an 'aggregate device' you can add any audio hardware u have loaded and functioning together into the one device, so you can use one cards optical, anothers analogue line ins if they are particularly good and anothers DSP and combine together so any audio application you use is able to access it all as if it were the one piece of hardware. its system level too, not third party software its part of the OS, so works in everything ive tried to use it with

 

[gooki]

For windows try Virtual Audio Cable.

 

[Joseph R]

Thanks for advices but i need either one simple chip/kit with 2 stereo pair that i can choose from different software programs like traktor or virtualdj
or either two pcm27xx that will be recognised as different outs in the software.

 

[qusp]

I thought thats what we were recommending