PC for Multichannel Music Playback - What's your Setup?

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Hi guys, I am looking into ways of simplyfing my setup and perhaps go completely disc less. This would mean introducing a av receiver and remove the player and pre amps from the chain. One question I have, when you connect your pc or NAS via HDMI to the receiver, you will always get gapless playback of stereo and multi channel?

Second question, modernday receiver can also decode mkv files, or how do they handle video files?

Thanks.
you have latest Oppo so why you just start to use it as a renderer for playback from PC or NAS in existent system?
 
my Nividia GeForce downsample audio through HDMI to 48/16
also have M-Audio (not HDMI) but seems it has some issues with Win10

Win10 sure brings in new problems... Now everytime I press "play" or "stop" on ANY audio file format in foobar, or any other "non-music editing" software, I get a soft audio click. Each time. :(
 
Win10 sure brings in new problems...
sure, quite creepy OS. i think it even worse than Win Millenium.
best one i've used for straight 10 years without even single issue was Win 2003 Server.
now considering to switch back, perhaps to Win7 or Win8.1
 
Could be as well, I am just playing around with various ideas.

Edit: this is rply to 0tto #321
i have Samsung BD-C6900 which i use as renderer in main system over home WiFi.
unfortunately its not as much advanced in regard of audio formats as Oppo is.
other than this everything else (internet streaming, different video formats, etc) works just fine. quite convenient.
it's amazes me not really anybody start to manufacture top-line advanced and yet simple renderers. i hinted to guys
from Involve. oh well, seems it went in vain :(
 
I've found Windows 10 also wipes out your Homegroup network settings after doing an update, so nothing sees your PC to stream from or file share, which is irritating! :mad: It also has a tendency to miss that I have USB DVD/Blu-Ray read-writers attached to my PC on a regular basis. In fact Windows 10 isn't very good with any legacy equipment. I have a NAS but I download to my PC check the files play and then copy to my NAS. I bought a Panasonic DMP-BDT700EB purely for its ability to stream 5.1 FLAC, 5.1 wav files from my servers - as all my other kit would only do stereo. Nothing I have does stereo/multichannel DSD from file.
 
sure, quite creepy OS. i think it even worse than Win Millenium.
best one i've used for straight 10 years without even single issue was Win 2003 Server.
now considering to switch back, perhaps to Win7 or Win8.1

That's exactly what I did, my graphics card gave problems after working flawlessly for 3 weeks :confused: so I'm back on W7 and I like it.
 
It took until the 3rd or 4th Windows 10 update to stop my PC from often booting in a low res graphics mode, as Windows 10 said I didn't have a graphics card. Yet my i5-650 based PC has integrated graphics!

That's exactly what I did, my graphics card gave problems after working flawlessly for 3 weeks :confused: so I'm back on W7 and I like it.
 
It took until the 3rd or 4th Windows 10 update to stop my PC from often booting in a low res graphics mode, as Windows 10 said I didn't have a graphics card. Yet my i5-650 based PC has integrated graphics!

Interesting, many problems with W10 seem to be driver related, my computerstore tech advised me to stay away from W10 and I will. I did like the speed of it but it still has too many issues, not to mention the privacy stuff.
 
Ah, that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh :D
Hence I got about 4 gazillion different remixes of Station To Station 5.1 I did (all of them varying shades of shit, I've thrown in the towel now, resigned myself you really can't polish a turd.)

That's what happened with me and a turd called "Pet Sounds"!
 
Interesting, many problems with W10 seem to be driver related, my computerstore tech advised me to stay away from W10 and I will. I did like the speed of it but it still has too many issues, not to mention the privacy stuff.
i didn't found Win10 to be noticeable faster of previous versions, at least on the same hardware.
 
I have been playing around a bit with my server and Oppo.

Server has Vortexbox on it, Linux based. I was able to set up that I can use the Oppo as Media Renderer, allowing to play files using the ethernet connection. Both stereo and multichannel files. This way I can use iPeng as controller, which works easier than the Oppo MC app.

It could be placebo and I need to do some a/b ing, but it seems to sound better than USB input. Only drawback so far is that the Oppo does not allow gapless this way. For gapless I have to use the Oppo MC app.

Now if Oppo would make it possible to allow gapless playback using the Oppo as renderer, it would make a killer multichannel dac :)
 
The Oppo user interface is quite slow too.

I'm still planning to do a detailed write up on a new low cost ($100/$89euro) media player running Kodi software (free) that supports gapless playback (including MCH FLAC and HDMI Passthrough for DTS-HDMA etc). I should receive it late July (it's being released on 16th).

It can be used with media stored on a NAS/Server or with external USB hard drives (cheaper). At that price it's would make an ideal entry point for members looking to digitise their music collection.
 
I hope this might be the right thread for this question/problem. I've had my PC routed to my Denon AVR for several years now. Has worked flawlessly up until recently. The problem I'm having (which isn't the end of the world) is every time I shut down my system (laptop always stays on though), it resets the audio to play back as if it's stereo. Never used to do this.

Normally, when I fire up the system (all auto by Harmony One), and open Foobar, click a multi-channel album, the Denon automatically switches over the Multi-channel and plays as such.

Now, it never switches over to multi-channel...just stereo. I have to manually go into the audio settings of the laptop (yes, laptop, not Denon) and select 5.1 setup, click OK and then it switches over. See picture... Anyone know how to get this simple setting to stay in place (default)? Seems what I'm doing should do the trick, but it never does now.

5.1 missing.JPG
 
So, take a look at that picture of settings in laptop. When I shut down the system and fire it back up, the configuration has resorted back to Stereo and I have to scroll down to 5.1

Every single time....I don't get it. Why would it keep resorting back? Never used to...:confused:
 
So, take a look at that picture of settings in laptop. When I shut down the system and fire it back up, the configuration has resorted back to Stereo and I have to scroll down to 5.1

Every single time....I don't get it. Why would it keep resorting back? Never used to...:confused:

HDMI negotiation is a pain in the butt. I've had similar problems caused by System Audio settings in Kodi, and by analogous settings on the receiver. Check out settings at both ends and make sure they're right. If you're using the Kodi, the right setting has a name that includes "optimal."
 
HDMI negotiation is a pain in the butt. I've had similar problems caused by System Audio settings in Kodi, and by analogous settings on the receiver. Check out settings at both ends and make sure they're right. If you're using the Kodi, the right setting has a name that includes "optimal."

nah, I"m using foobar. So maybe there is a setting in foobar? YIkes....I certainly haven't changed any settings....
 
I hope this might be the right thread for this question/problem. I've had my PC routed to my Denon AVR for several years now. Has worked flawlessly up until recently. The problem I'm having (which isn't the end of the world) is every time I shut down my system (laptop always stays on though), it resets the audio to play back as if it's stereo. Never used to do this.

Normally, when I fire up the system (all auto by Harmony One), and open Foobar, click a multi-channel album, the Denon automatically switches over the Multi-channel and plays as such.

Now, it never switches over to multi-channel...just stereo. I have to manually go into the audio settings of the laptop (yes, laptop, not Denon) and select 5.1 setup, click OK and then it switches over. See picture... Anyone know how to get this simple setting to stay in place (default)? Seems what I'm doing should do the trick, but it never does now.

Have you checked to make sure your HDMI/Denon AVR is still the default audio playback device?

I'm not sure which version of Windows you're using, but in Windows 7 (while your AVR is on/connected) right click on the speaker icon in your taskbar, pick 'playback devices' and you should get a window with the various outputs from your computer ('speakers', 'headphones' and hopefully your HDMI out). Right click on the HDMI/AVR output and select 'set as default device' - once you do this a little green circle with a checkmark in it should appear next to the device. It should (obviously there are no guarantees in Windows, as in life) from then on switch your output to the HDMI/AVR whenever the device is connected.
 
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