Computer as a highend audio surround source and player thread..

If it's OK with the moderators I'd like to start this thread.

Having spent quite some time exploring and experimenting with this option, I can say it can easily be done by simply using something like VLC media player ->iMac->toslink->surround receiver

This will pretty much handle any surround file format including the ones quad users might be more interested in (5.1 PCM/wav and 5.1 flac)

But this interface has it's problems. The question then is how can the sound be improved using this playback setup.

Over at computeraudiofile.com the crowd have got this licked with various itunes based media server add on's like Amarra and async usb->toslink or digital convertors. As a matter of fact Berkley Audio Design (one of the companies regarded as the pinnacle of this sort of technology) have just released one of these. But there are others.

The problem is they are for stereo. That is they reduce jitter and the resultant signal output is designed for just the one DAC. Correct me if I am wrong, but for surround you need 3 (5.1) or 4 (7.1) DAC's It would start getting expensive and rather complicated to somehow run the signal into 4x Berkley,Wavelength, or Weiss 202 DAC's !

So what are the best/easiest/least expensive to set up "other options"

I have had various opinions from people who really know their stuff on this. And it seems there are basically two. And they revolve around 7.1 analog input into the receiver. The source output being either

1/ A high end proaudio interface like the Metric Halo or
2/ A specific analog sound card like the lynx or Asus (again there are others)

The problem here is setup complexity and the "beta" testing often involved. Sometimes things just don't work! So I'd like to start this thread. So others with more experience than me can suggest the best route to take. One that works straight out of the box with minimal hassle (if this is possible )

My preference is OSX based. And at the moment I am leaning toward the Metric Halo/proaudio interface option...mainly because it also provides function going the other way (A->D) for archiving vinyl/SACD's etc..

I'd love comments from everyone

Cheers

Wap

Begs the questions;
How far from your pc is your HT?
How "high end" do you want to go?

If your sound card has SP/DIF out and you can bitstream via toslink to your HT you can go quite some distance.
Even with analog you can go quite some distance, but it requires special "solutions" because you are most likely going to encounter ground loop on a long run. (components plugged into a different circuit, e.g. can introduce ground loop)
If the pc is located close to the receiver, I don't see what problems there could be, as it will get down to whatever sound card you can be happy with and what kind of compatible connections you have. As you are probably aware, there are cards with HDMI or Analog or SP/DIF or combinations of the 3.

Or am I missing the mark completely here?

Once you have a surround file: a 5.1wav or 5.1flac, it's not so much that you can't find a way to play or stream the file. That's the easy part. Its a matter of if you can find a way to make it sound good. As good as say coming straight out of a high end universal disc player or transport. That's the hard part.

So here is my (non engineering/non technical) background on how I interpret what the heck is going on with all this..

For stereo files, there are a multitude of good solutions now to overcome some of the problems you point out. As well as others. Jitter, digital volume attenuation, computer noise etc

The reason stereo is easier is it only requires one DAC. Multichannel tracks require multichannel DAC's with multichannel outputs. Either on one chip. Or individual chips in pairs.

Right now as ted ( a very knowledgeable bloke on this and other similar forums) as well as Mark from iTrax (also on these forums) point out, the best way is to split the digital track into it's components, then run this into a high-end promusic interface like a metric halo. The reason they suggest this I gather is because something like the metric halo is just about the only device with jitter reduction and good sonic management on ALL channels

The way you actually break up the individual digital streams to interface into the metric halo is a bit problematic. As I understand it, via multiple SPDIF runs (say 4 for a 7.1 track). You see you have to get multi DIGITAL into the MH. Not multi analog. So it is the MH doing the D->A processing. Not the computer(by the way's you mention), or streamer (like a Dune for example). In other words fight the electronics industries obsession to move everyone over to HDMI. And there are a lot of folk trying to fight this. Have you seen some of the "computer as a high end HTPC threads" on AVS forums? Some serious fanatics their !!

Just diverging away from computers now (because this can be a cheaper, easier and less "noisy" way of doing things), I mention Dune here, because I love this streamer. It will play ALL the surround files very well. And is fairly cheap. I'm about to send one off to a well know modder to see what he can do with improving it's analog output. To see if it can be brought up to the same standard, as probably the best bang for buck multi format disc player right now. The Oppo.

The reason everyone is so excited by the new Oppo's (particularly the soon to be released 95) is finally a company is getting serious about putting some reasonable audio electronics into a surround track player. It has a 32bit state of the art Cyrus DAC, and reasonable power boards and oamps. So this device has the potential to move the game forward for surround playback. But again, the output is analog (the Oppo is doing the D->A conversion) And some folk are still not happy. They want to reduce jitter even further on ALL the channels. That's where the modders like Nuforce step in.

But as ted and others point out, there is another way. Get the multi channels as DIGITAL from a player or computer (this requires mods to the palyer), and run these signals into a Metric Halo. This is probably the purest way. And gives you other advantages of backing up the files, and direct mixing. But we really are getting into the high cost and true hobbyist (dare I say fanatical) end point here. One that the electronics industry hates of course, because they want to dumb everyone down to THEIR way of doing things. One crappy, noisy, jitter prone HDMI cable into one probably ever cheaper crappier noisier DAC chip in the surround receiver...

Well Sir, I wish you well on your quest. My equipment is not high end, but then neither is my hearing. I don't use the pc as a primary playback device, although I have a dedicated "pc" receiver and a toslink connection to my HT.
I can appreciate what you want to achieve. It's just beyond what I require.

I know it can get expensive getting a clean signal out of the computer. I'm still waiting but not holding my breath for a cheap EtherNET audio card. You might want to check out the Roland OCTA-CAPTURE or M-Audio Fast Track Ultra or something similar.

My computer playback software is Foobar 2000: http://www.foobar2000.org/download
With the Channel Mixer (Bass Manager): http://skipyrich.com/store/foo_channel_mixer.7z
As well as the ASIO Component for Bit-Perfect playback: http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_out_asio

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=&q=bit+perfect

hello to all - i use my computer to illegally download flac music - which i do not condone and neither does verizon fios - i am never sure how much to put the volume to on any of the players - lets say VLC - how do you know if your incoming power is too strong? i never know if its my receiver or my speaks that waffle under a heavy load - so i usually tune down the volume on the player - before it enters the receiver - which helps - but am i hurting something? i wonder why my pc doesnt have just a signal out set at what the limits should be? because its a dell! i called their customer service - i spoke with a 20 foot alligator in the phillipines - couldnt make a damn word out.

cheers
w.a.r.

w.a.reid said:

hello to all - i use my computer to illegally download flac music - which i do not condone and neither does verizon fios - i am never sure how much to put the volume to on any of the players - lets say VLC - how do you know if your incoming power is too strong? i never know if its my receiver or my speaks that waffle under a heavy load - so i usually tune down the volume on the player - before it enters the receiver - which helps - but am i hurting something? i wonder why my pc doesnt have just a signal out set at what the limits should be? because its a dell! i called their customer service - i spoke with a 20 foot alligator in the phillipines - couldnt make a damn word out.

cheers
w.a.r.

Click to expand...

Hi
Maybe try turning down the receiver to a subdued level, then slowly bring up the player's volume until it starts to distort. Then back it off some.
This article might also help: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan03/articles/impedanceworkshop.asp

My Setup for this is: Hackintosh OSX>VLC 2.01(uses memory caching)>8 channel ackodac> 8 channel exau2i transport(usb)>highend 4 channel amps speakers. If I need the .1 channel for sub then I handle that from the hackintosh sound card. But VLC downmixes to 4.0 very nicely and the ackodac being a sabre32 DAC has very nice upsampling and jitter reduction. Superb audiophile sound! from MLP, PCM based hi rez 4.0 or 5.1 Flacs, or dts files.

In my case: Ubuntu and VLC. Sound card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro (a USB card), connected to my home theatre system by analogue 6-channel. I recently finished ripping my entire surround collection (or downloading SACD ISOs for my SACDs, as I don't have the PS3 setup to do it myself) and it all sounds terriffic. Just as good as playing back the actual discs with the Oppo BDP-83. Plus, I don't get all the handshake or swallow-the-first-millisecond-of-a-track annoyance anymore.

I rip DVD-A to FLAC, DTS CD to WAV, and DVD-V to ISO or MKV. For SACD ISOs, I extract the tracks to FLAC using Foobar (obviously in Windows). Software:

Ubuntu:
- DVD Audio Extractor (for DVD-A)
- RipOff (for DTS CD)
- Handbrake (for DVD-V to MKV)
- K9Copy (sometimes handbrake doesn't properly read DVDs, so I need to use this. DVD-V to ISO)

Windows:
- Xrecode (can transcode any audio format to any other audio format, merges FLACs for gapless albums)
- Foobar with SACD plugin (to extract FLACs from SACD ISOs)
- DVD-A Explorer (rarely ever need this, as DVD Audio Extractor under Linux does a great job. Only caveat: DVD-A Explorer is free, DVD Audio Extractor costs 38 bucks)

I noticed that sometimes, VLC has trouble reading the extracted FLACs properly. There will be 1-second silent gaps in songs. Re-ripping (and sometimes re-ripping, re-ripping and re-ripping) fixes it. It's particularly annoying if the issue is in a gapless album, and the problem occurs towards the end. You then have to re-rip, re-merge and re-listen to the whole thing again. Porcupine Tree's "Stupid Dream" drove me crazy, but I finally got it right. Also, sometimes RipOff rips tracks off DTS CDs to stereo WAVs (and you only hear noise). I was never able to properly rip "I can hear the River" from Joe Cocker's "Night Calls", so I had to download it instead.

Funny how things change in a year and a half. :banana: I almost always use my HTPC for playback of all music now, and have been for quite a while. Everything through the video card via HDMI to the AVR.

I built a music server using an old Dell Pent III I found abandoned in a vacant apt. in my building. Dropped under the hood a $12.99 sound card with tos/link out for bit-perfect digi out after downloading ASIO to over-ride the Windows audio devices (Did a fresh Win XPpro install). This going into my nearly 10 year old Onkyo 6-channel receiver's optical in. Oh, and I snapped in another 500m. of ram taken from another Dell machine. Interesting that the only machine that would accept this stick of ram was another Dell.

Two Western Digital 2tb HDDs with a zillion flac files from CDs and downloads. This is musical heaven. But the catch is that the only surround I am decoding through this low budget rig is the DTS released discs and quad conversions.

Anyway, I am using an old version of J River as the PC based player. This was a nice starter kit. I figured I'd start with a no-budget server, and spend money on a good DAC later when I'm in a spending mood.

Between the CD rips (dBpower amp) and downloads I must have 35,000 album on 4tb of HDD space. Lots o' needle drops in there too, just love them.

ok, I dont know if my brain isnt working well, but i read this thread and still not understand quite well what I shall do:

I want to do my own 5.1/4.0 mixes using Adobe Audition, and I want to listen what I'm doing while im doing it (currently i take a leap of faith: I do the mix without listening whats happening on the rears and center, convert it to flac, put it in a usb drive, connect it to my oppo, and listen to it, and if I don like what I did I have to do it all over again).

So, what i think could work out is the following:

For PC: Connect my PC to my receiver using a usb to hdmi cable.
For MAC: Connect my MAC to my receiver using a thunderbolt to hdi cable.

is that right, or do i still need multichannel soundcard?

I cant use my multichannel analog inputs cause im using those for something else

I found a way to turn my quad core lenovo G505s into a quad playing machine. Using the java player from http://www.hotto.de/software.html I can use my built-in speakers to play the front channels while the rear channels go to the headphone output for a rear set of computer speakers. There may be some phase issues but it does sound pretty good. SQ recordings from Paul Simon and EW&F sound spacious and rear channel decoding of "My Little Town" has full separation of the Lb & Rb channels (at the start guitar in the Lb and drums in the Rb). And the other matrix selections (QS, EV & Dynaquad) decode nicely from my home-rolled matrix recordings. :sun

Myself I use Dvde and Foobar to rip Dvd audio long as you have the DVD watermark component on Foobar and I also use Foobar to rip DTS. And when I bump into a ISO file I use WinRaR to open the file then dvde to finish the job so my tools of the trade are Dvde, Foobar and WinRaR

Watsy, which file container format does Foobar use to output AC-3 and DTS codecs, respectively?

What you do is Google free codec pack for Foobar ,these are components that you add to Foobar in this pack there ac-3 and DTS codecs when you add these to Foobar your able to convert to another format say from DTS to Flac and also your able to Rip DTS discs and also with the right component your able to rip DVD audio..

Watsy1958 said:

What you do is Google free codec pack for Foobar ,these are components that you add to Foobar in this pack there ac-3 and DTS codecs when you add these to Foobar your able to convert to another format say from DTS to Flac and also your able to Rip DTS discs and also with the right component your able to rip DVD audio..

Click to expand...

http://www.foobar2000.org/components

Watsy1958 said:

What you do is Google free codec pack for Foobar ,these are components that you add to Foobar in this pack there ac-3 and DTS codecs when you add these to Foobar your able to convert to another format say from DTS to Flac and also your able to Rip DTS discs and also with the right component your able to rip DVD audio..

Click to expand...

Codec packs are a bad idea. Just add components as needed. You don't need any components to rip a DTS disc (DTS CD's), they rip just like any regular CD...

Hey guys, just a quick note... We also have this thread for anything related to using your computer for multichannel music playback.

You sure do need the DTS component if you don't have it then you cant listen to a DTS disc and also convert to flac. If thats the case why do they offer The DTS component.