So here's the idea, and it's not a new one: Arrive at your magic brutefir filter which is just perfect for your speakers and your room, split two-channel stereo into 4 or 6 (depending on how many drivers you have) uncompressed PCM channels and store it on disk.
Now I just need a way to dump all of this data, in uncompressed multi-channel PCM form, to my receiver. The receiver's DACs are used, and I connect the amplified outputs to the appropriate drivers.
There are two issues here.
1. Do most receivers (mine is a Harman/Kardon AVR-135) accept multi-channel PCM in their digital input?
2. Do they like 44.1KHz multi-channel PCM? Or only 48/96KHz?
2. Most soundcards don't output multichannel PCM. They do 2-channel PCM and DD5.1/DTS. So are there any (hopefully cheap) soundcards which do this?
I realize I could use the DACs on the soundcard and run the analog outputs to my receiver and still get the job done. However, I would really like to go digital upto the receiver. I'd be happy with just 4 channels, 16-bits, 44.1 or 48KHz.
I'm also toying with the idea of burning a video dvd with 4 channel LPCM at 48KHz and running it on my DVD player.
Any suggestions?
Now I just need a way to dump all of this data, in uncompressed multi-channel PCM form, to my receiver. The receiver's DACs are used, and I connect the amplified outputs to the appropriate drivers.
There are two issues here.
1. Do most receivers (mine is a Harman/Kardon AVR-135) accept multi-channel PCM in their digital input?
2. Do they like 44.1KHz multi-channel PCM? Or only 48/96KHz?
2. Most soundcards don't output multichannel PCM. They do 2-channel PCM and DD5.1/DTS. So are there any (hopefully cheap) soundcards which do this?
I realize I could use the DACs on the soundcard and run the analog outputs to my receiver and still get the job done. However, I would really like to go digital upto the receiver. I'd be happy with just 4 channels, 16-bits, 44.1 or 48KHz.
I'm also toying with the idea of burning a video dvd with 4 channel LPCM at 48KHz and running it on my DVD player.
Any suggestions?
1) Some, yes, most no. Firewire and HDMI are the only ways to get uncompressed multichannel PCM into a receiver, and these only work with DVD-A as far as I know (SACD can go over firewire, but of course it's not PCM). The cheapest I know of is the Panny XR70 via HDMI, but it may only work when paired with it's matching DVD player (S97?) since DVD-A over HDMI is either new or non-standard. Most of the firewire units are pricey, but I *believe* there has been some level of interoperability between brands there.
2) I *believe* that any format supported by DVD-A should work in theory, but since I've never done it, I don't know.
3) Yes, but not ones that work with the above mentioned receivers. You can output 8 channels of 24/48 via ADAT, or there are cards like the Lynx AES-16 which have up to 8 pairs of spdif, but none of these work with conventional receivers.
Your only real hope is firewire, and as far as I know it's best described as 'not there yet', although it's probably not that far off. Might actually work on OS X, and Linux drivers are making progress. I have no personal experience with this, though
Right now, if you don't want to do the normal multichannel analog out, I think the only viable way is to use say Discwelder to burn a DVD-A which you then play back via conventional DVD-A digital paths (assuming you have one). This is probably limited to a 2-way system, though.
2) I *believe* that any format supported by DVD-A should work in theory, but since I've never done it, I don't know.
3) Yes, but not ones that work with the above mentioned receivers. You can output 8 channels of 24/48 via ADAT, or there are cards like the Lynx AES-16 which have up to 8 pairs of spdif, but none of these work with conventional receivers.
Your only real hope is firewire, and as far as I know it's best described as 'not there yet', although it's probably not that far off. Might actually work on OS X, and Linux drivers are making progress. I have no personal experience with this, though
Right now, if you don't want to do the normal multichannel analog out, I think the only viable way is to use say Discwelder to burn a DVD-A which you then play back via conventional DVD-A digital paths (assuming you have one). This is probably limited to a 2-way system, though.
Thanks a lot.
Hmm. That's bad news. I don't have a DVD-A stack, nor can I acquire one in the near future. However, I believe the DVD Video paper spec mandates support for multi-channel linear PCM, upto 8 channels, 16/20/24 bits per sample and sampling rate of 48 or 96KHz. You need to pick values such that the total bitrate doesn't exceed 6144 Kbps.
DVD-Video audio spec
I tried burning a DVD with 4 channels/48KHz/16bits LPCM and it kind of worked. As in, the DVD player (Philips DVP642K), connected to the H/K AVR-135 with coax digital, didn't barf on it. I got a 48KHz PCM line displayed in the receiver's OSD.
So the question is, will any *soundcard* do what my DVD player seems capable of? i.e. 4 channels on a single connection? From the rest of your post, it appears not. 2 SPDIFs are no good unless I use external DACs.
I will probably be better off trusting the soundcard and getting 4 channels of analog output. The new Audigy is supposed to have decent DACs and a very good SNR. That or one of the M-Audio series.
dwk123 said:
Hmm. That's bad news. I don't have a DVD-A stack, nor can I acquire one in the near future. However, I believe the DVD Video paper spec mandates support for multi-channel linear PCM, upto 8 channels, 16/20/24 bits per sample and sampling rate of 48 or 96KHz. You need to pick values such that the total bitrate doesn't exceed 6144 Kbps.
DVD-Video audio spec
I tried burning a DVD with 4 channels/48KHz/16bits LPCM and it kind of worked. As in, the DVD player (Philips DVP642K), connected to the H/K AVR-135 with coax digital, didn't barf on it. I got a 48KHz PCM line displayed in the receiver's OSD.
So the question is, will any *soundcard* do what my DVD player seems capable of? i.e. 4 channels on a single connection? From the rest of your post, it appears not. 2 SPDIFs are no good unless I use external DACs.
I will probably be better off trusting the soundcard and getting 4 channels of analog output. The new Audigy is supposed to have decent DACs and a very good SNR. That or one of the M-Audio series.
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