Twin SPDIF out from PC (one each for XDA and HT)

[vishal]

Hi Folks
This is a question for those that use a PC as the source of their media for both HT and 2-ch listening.

My PC has an HDMI output that I use for the HT input into the pre/pro. Now to integrate the XDA-1 into my system I would need the PC to put out two digital audio outs - one for the HT input and another for the XDA-1. The idea is - not to have to re-configure the PC audio output device everytime I was to listen to HT Vs 2-Ch. Instead have both always go to the pre/pro (one digital for HT and the other analog via XDA-1 for 2ch). Then just switch the input on the pre/pro and listen to either route (HT or 2-ch). How do I make that happen?

- The only option I can think of is to add a dedicated sound card that gives me two SPDIF outs. Creative has a card for that that puts out one coax and one toslink both live simultaneously. I dont know whether I will run into HDMI/HDCP compliance issues. Anyone try that?

- Using the USB into XDA-1 is not an option because it does not solve the core issue of switching PC audio devices and cant be used for HT route as is. Besides we all know the USB XDA-1 route is limited to 16/48 so I need to use an SPDIF instead for the XDA-1.

Any other options? Anyone had to go through this? Maybe I am going about this all wrong and there are easier solutions?

[jmilton]

Does the Onkyo have a digital out? Route the signal out (direct, so the Onkyo DAC doesn't mess with the original incoming signal via HDMI) to the XDA, then back to the Onkyo via analog or straight to a 2 channel amp. Awkward, but do-able.

[vishal]

Thanks for the suggestion.
The Integra does have a digital out. Not sure if it is "pure".
Bringing the analog back to the Integra will be funky but taking it from XDA to XPA might work.
I'll try that.

[Deleted]

Oh boy

I see you have a Integra 9.9 A very solid performing Pre/Pro i might add. Sold mine last week. Two days ago i got my XDA-1 and i am running it straight to my XPA-5. Just like you i will have XPA-1's (when they become available again lol).

Like many people have said and lonnie, running the XDA-1 straight to an amp is a real treat. The toggle switch on the XPA-1 (XLR/RCA) is rated to 50,000 cycles, so it will never wear out. Unless you flip it a 1,000 times a day lol ;D


Are your XPA-1 accessible? Running analog back into the 9.9 will lose some of the XDA-1's luster and shine

[CrazyBlue]

I use a Musiland Monitor 02 US to send digital to my XDA-1. It has coax and toslink outs. As a DAC it's not bad and the headphone amp is alright too. But as a USB>SPDIF converter it performs flawlessly—with Windows Vista 32 bit > Winamp (WMA) and J River (ASIO)—adds no coloration to the sound, is full, detailed, and smooth with extended highs and bass. The drivers are asynchronous, support up to 24/192, and include native ASIO support, so no "ASIO4all" is necessary.

I looked into replacing my sound card last summer to get digital out and, after a ton of research and review reading, spent the $125 on the Musiland. Couldn't be happier.







cgi.ebay.com/USB-Digital-Sound-Card-Musiland-Monitor-02-US-/260437930872

www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/443786/musiland-monitor-02-us

[vishal]

Thanks Crazy4Blues,
Thats definitely worth checking into. Love that it is usb hence quite portable.
Since I would be using it for HT as well I would need it to be capable of bitstreaming mulitchannel HD audio like TrueHD and DTS-HD. Do you know if it supports those?

[ultramic]

To the OP, yes you can output audio from the onboard sound (ie HDMI) and the external soundcard - this is exactly my current setup. Just make sure you point the playback software to the correct device to output from.

For HT, I have digital going out from my HTPC directly to the receiver. For the software, I use MPC and PDVD and select digital output (HDMI or optical).

For music, I too have the Musiland Monitor 02 which is connected to the HTPC via USB and connected to the receiver via analogue RCA's (i use the CD IN) - you can also use optical from the Musiland Monitor 02 to the receiver. My playback software is foobar and I select the Musiland device as the output device using WASAPI or ASIO.

The above setup enables me to simply change the input device on the receiver for HT or 2 channel.

[vishal]

Thanks ultramic,
But I use Win7MC for all playback - HT and music. So I need the same device to have two outputs. I can use Musiland for both but then IT will need to support bitstreaming mulitchannel HD audio for HT media like TrueHD and DTS-HD.

Curiously, how do you interface with (operate) Foobar to play music? Is there a remote driven interface or do you have to take the keyboard+mouse to it? Maybe I need to give in and move to using two different apps for the two scenarios.

[bobbyt]

There are Android Foobar apps, and I assume at least one for the iPhone as well.

You can also use Gmote for Android, which just turns your phone into a generic remote, with Play/Pause/Stop/Forward/Back buttons that work with various media players, as well as a touchpad (and keyboard) for controlling your computer.

[vishal]

Guys
What do you use to see what bitrate/sampling frequency you are getting out of the PC? Wish XDA-1 displayed that.

[thielguy]

silly question - but is USB the only *input*?
I can't use this as a stand alone DAC between a cd player, or appleTV and my downstream systems, can I?

[ultramic]

Feb 24, 2011 18:11:58 GMT -5 vishal said:

Thanks ultramic,
But I use Win7MC for all playback - HT and music. So I need the same device to have two outputs. I can use Musiland for both but then IT will need to support bitstreaming mulitchannel HD audio for HT media like TrueHD and DTS-HD.

Curiously, how do you interface with (operate) Foobar to play music? Is there a remote driven interface or do you have to take the keyboard+mouse to it? Maybe I need to give in and move to using two different apps for the two scenarios.

The Musiland cannot decode HD Audio. If you want a DAC that can decode HD audio, you are basically looking at a pre/pro or receiver. You might be better off forgetting about the external soundcard and buying a pre/pro or receiver which has good DAC's.

Just my 2 cents on WMC7:
- I personally dont like it - not flexible enough. For a front end, have you tried Mediaportal ? Looks tens times better than WMC IMHO and you can point different programs to auto play different file types.

- Having gone through 3 different remotes in the past, I do not like to use them - too slow to navigate around. I use a cheap wireless keyboard which has a trackpad ( this way you dont have to drag around a separate mouse) and I have never looked back. eg this is what I have and only cost me $60, very happy with it and still going strong after 3 years:

www.shintaro.com.au/products/06_keyboards_mice/keyboards/SHKEYMCE/index.php

[vishal]

Actually I dont want Musiland to do any decoding at all. I already have the Integra pre/pro for that. All I need is two SPDIFs out of SAME htpc audio device. SAME is the key need here as I dont want to be in the business of toggling sound devices on the PC everytime I go from HT to 2-ch use. Obviously I will use only one of the two SPDIF outputs at any given time but both need to be on all the time.

One SPDIF (unadulterated digital signal) will go to the XDA-1. XDA-1 will do its magic and then send analog to the Integra pre/pro (say input 1). This will be used for 2-ch

The other SPDIF (also unadulterated digital signal) will go straight to the Integra pre/pro for HT (say input 2). Integra will do the HT decoding. Of course this requires that Musiland's drivers should support bit streaming of HD Audio and not downsample it to LPCM etc. This is what I was asking.

With this setup all I have to do is pick the proper input on the Pre/pro based on what type of source I am playing. So for lossless 2-ch music playback (LPCM) I will use Input 1. For HT playback (Dolby Digital/TrueHD/DTS-HD) I will use input 2. Hope that helps clarify my needs and dillemma.

As for wireless keyboard, I agree, I use Logitech DiNovo for HTPC admin work. So when I want to listen to the 2-ch via XDA-1 I can conceivably reach for the keyboard and bring up Foobar. I just can't expect wife and kids to do that. But I am OK with that since wife and kids will likely be fine listening to the music playback on the input 2 (via Integra DAC).

I will check other forums to see if Musiland supports bitstreaming of mulitchannel HD audio like TrueHD and DTS-HD.
Thanks.

[ultramic]

Firstly, remember that SPDIF does not have the bandwidth to pass through HD audio - therefore you need a HDMI connection for HT. You will need to find a suitable graphics card to bitsream HD audio (cheap) or look into the intel integrated graphics/CPU route which requires a new motherboard and CPU (expensive). and yes, you might face handshake issues with the HDMI connection.

Given the above hardware, the rest is purely software related and whether or not you can point the playback devices to use SPDIF or HDMI. As I said in my first post, you can definately output from multiple sources on your HTPC but you have the tell the respective playback software which output to use via the options/preferences tab.

As I dont use WMC7, I'm not sure if it will allow you this choice. If not, then that is a limitation of WMC7 and you will have to use individual programs or mediaportal to acheive what you want.

[bobbyt]

Feb 25, 2011 14:41:19 GMT -5 thielguy said:

silly question - but is USB the only *input*?
I can't use this as a stand alone DAC between a cd player, or appleTV and my downstream systems, can I?

It has 1 USB, 2 coax, 2 optical, and 1 AES/EBU (XLR connector) as inputs.

It has an XLR and RCA connector for each channel's output.

[Shane]

Hi Vishhat, just thought I'd throw my two cents... most of which Ultramic has pointed out

The way I see it you have three options:

1. For Win7MC, Find a soundcard (sorry, haven't looked) with both HDMI and a SPDIF output.

2. For Win7MC, bit of a hack, but you could use an audio de-embedder, which takes a single HDMI output and takes the audio from the stream and sends it out a SPDIF port, as well as passing the HDMI signal through an HDMI output. This will only work out for you if your current HDMI output support bit-streaming of protected audio signals such as TrueHD and DTS-MA. Otherwise you'll have to get another sound/graphics card with HDMI output and PAP (protected audio path) support.

3. Scrap Win7MC for Mediaportal. With Mediaportal you can direct specific playback types to specific audio output devces. Eg: DVD & Movies use your HDMI output, and Music playback use your SPDIF output. You can also use ASIO drivers for audio playback which allows bit perfect passthrough of the audio stream, without any re-sampling or attenutaion by the Win7 audio engine (think it's called kmixer).

Option 1, above is probably your preferred choice if you want to stick with Win7MC. But a huge flaw with Win7MC, is it uses the windows kmixer engine, which re-samples and attenuates the audio stream. I found no way to pass-thru 24bit 96kHz audio using Win7MC... so you may want to consider if this is importnat to you or not. The fact that ou want to route your 2-chan through the XDA-1 suggests you do care

I am running Mediaportal, have tried Win7MC, and although I perferred the user-friendly interface and navigation of Win7MC over Mediaportal, I found the lack of advanced configuration a no-go.

With Mediaportal I am using the 'pure audio' plugin with the ASIO4All driver and get bit-perfect audio to my receiver via SPDIF. No down-sampling or volume attenutaion from the windows volume controllers. And all I have is a SPDIF riser-card attached to my motherboards SPDIF jumper... from cruddy old realtech chipset... But it's bit-perfect which is ultimately what you want. ;D

Although I currently have everything routed to my SPDIF output, If I were to add a PAP compliant HDMI output, it is very easy to just point all video/DVD/Bluray content to the HDMI output and have the best of both worlds ;D

Shane

[orangeLollies]

Feb 26, 2011 14:36:05 GMT -5 @Shane said:

Hi Vishhat, just thought I'd throw my two cents... most of which Ultramic has pointed out

The way I see it you have three options:

1. For Win7MC, Find a soundcard (sorry, haven't looked) with both HDMI and a SPDIF output.

2. For Win7MC, bit of a hack, but you could use an audio de-embedder, which takes a single HDMI output and takes the audio from the stream and sends it out a SPDIF port, as well as passing the HDMI signal through an HDMI output. This will only work out for you if your current HDMI output support bit-streaming of protected audio signals such as TrueHD and DTS-MA. Otherwise you'll have to get another sound/graphics card with HDMI output and PAP (protected audio path) support.

3. Scrap Win7MC for Mediaportal. With Mediaportal you can direct specific playback types to specific audio output devces. Eg: DVD & Movies use your HDMI output, and Music playback use your SPDIF output. You can also use ASIO drivers for audio playback which allows bit perfect passthrough of the audio stream, without any re-sampling or attenutaion by the Win7 audio engine (think it's called kmixer).

Option 1, above is probably your preferred choice if you want to stick with Win7MC. But a huge flaw with Win7MC, is it uses the windows kmixer engine, which re-samples and attenuates the audio stream. I found no way to pass-thru 24bit 96kHz audio using Win7MC... so you may want to consider if this is importnat to you or not. The fact that ou want to route your 2-chan through the XDA-1 suggests you do care

I am running Mediaportal, have tried Win7MC, and although I perferred the user-friendly interface and navigation of Win7MC over Mediaportal, I found the lack of advanced configuration a no-go.

With Mediaportal I am using the 'pure audio' plugin with the ASIO4All driver and get bit-perfect audio to my receiver via SPDIF. No down-sampling or volume attenutaion from the windows volume controllers. And all I have is a SPDIF riser-card attached to my motherboards SPDIF jumper... from cruddy old realtech chipset... But it's bit-perfect which is ultimately what you want. ;D

Although I currently have everything routed to my SPDIF output, If I were to add a PAP compliant HDMI output, it is very easy to just point all video/DVD/Bluray content to the HDMI output and have the best of both worlds ;D

Shane

^Ummm, that last post was from me ...

... wasn't logged in and was wondering why I had to pass some security checks pefore posting ...blame it on Sunday morning and my turn to get up to the kids

[vishal]

Thanks Ultramic and Kiwi. Well sumarized kiwi.

I have ATI 4670HD currently which does NOT support HD Audio anyway.
So I'll have to a get a 5xxx series or higher anyway. At that point I'll get one with HDMI and spdif.

Till then for 2ch I have switched to using USB with Foobar (with WASAPI) to get bit perfect streaming. Most of my 2-ch media is 16/44.1 so that is fine.

The bigger issue I am facing is to convince myself (and eventually others) that lossless bit perfect audio files playing via foobar using USB xda-1 sounds better than playing the same media in W7MC via hdmi using the dac of the Integra. It just doesn't. No matter what I try. One last thing to try is to send the output of xda straight to the xpa (no loop back to Integra) and compare again. I will lose the unified vol control of Integra but that's fine if I gain SQ. Will try that and let you guys know.

If still no difference then back goes the XDA I guess.