Media PC's and Distributed Home Audio

[sundevil_1997]

I've recently gotten into the whole "build your own pvr" thing, and it's on it's way to happening. Of course, with a little extra effort, it soon becomes a media PC that handles all of your entertainment needs. It was then that I discovered a slight potential problem.

I just recently had a house built, and I have speakers wired into 3 rooms besides the main room where all of the home entertainment stuff is. I was then going to buy a distributed audio amplifier. It would power all 3 room's speakers, and also take up to 6 different audio inputs. Then, each room could listen to a specific audio source. Thus, when all the guys are over watching football in the family room, then all the girls are in the living room listening to the CD's on the home computer network (sorry for the stereotyping, stay with me here).

Currently for audio sources, I have my DirecTv tuner, my fm radio (in the amp), and my DVD/CD player. I was going to add a separate media player (a $200 one from Linksys) to play audio from off the home network. so, that'd be 4 different audio sources...plenty of choices for everyone to keep happy.

I realized though that if I go through with my media pc, it will effectively consolidate everything I have into 1 single audio/video appliance. If my media pc replaces my TV tuner, and also becomes my media player for CD's, and eventually replaces my DVD/CD player...then no more separate media sources....and no more different choices throughout the house.

Then I began to wonder...is there some way that I could, say, put multiple sound cards into a single media pc, and have the different applications (DVD player, Windows Media player, Beyond TV, etc) output to specific sound cards? That way, there would be several distinct audio sources, they'd just happen to all be in the same PC. I know a PC should be able to handle playing TV and playing CD's at the same time...or playing sound channels off the TV tuner while playing a DVD....the question is if I could get those things out of the PC separately.

Any suggestions? Or is my whole house going to be listening to the football game (not necessarily a BAD thing...)

thanks!

[SonicVanguard]

Check this thread: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=121391 Specifically posts #12 and on - but read the whole thing to get the idea of what he was looking for.

It's basically what you are looking at doing - if you've got specific questions after the read, just post back.

Dave.

[sundevil_1997]

Great! I did a quick browse, and that thread does look like it's on the right track. I did a quick search of distributed audio before I posted, but it figures those particular words didn't show up in that post.

I'll give it a fuller read when I get home and post if I have any questions. Thanks for the quick reply!

[sundevil_1997]

Well, I do have a question.

I can't seem to get Windows to even allow me to have 2 sound cards. I have my main sound card, an SB Live Value. Then, I borrowed an SB Live card from my cousin and threw it in there. It shows up in the hardware manager as being "Unable to start.". So, if I can't get more than 1 audio output on this system, it's going to be hard to see if this Media Center is doing what I want or not. Is there some trick to getting Windows to allow more than 1 sound card? I thought maybe it was an issue of them being next to each other in PCI slots...I'd heard there were some quirks with that. But they're not next to each other.

Any suggestions?

[SonicVanguard]

What version of windows are you running?

Dave.

[sundevil_1997]

Here's my current setup:

Windows XP Media Center Edition
AMD Athlon 1.3 GHz
1 GB RAM
ASUS A7N8X v2.0 MB
RADEON 9250
Happ PVR-150
Sound Blaster Live Value! (my original sound card, and only one still working)
Sound Blaster Live!
On-board mother board AC97 sound

The two sound card boards are separated by 1 PCI slot, which the video card is in (card isn't an AGP). Under device manager, I've got 1 question mark for multimedia audio controller. I just enabled the onboard sound in the bios, and it hasn't shown up yet either. I think I might try downloading the latest motherboard drivers to see if that shows up then....but I'd still much rather go the route of multiple sound cards.

I'd be happy if I could have a total of 3 sound cards in the system. One would be the audio output of the DVD player, one of the tv tuner, and one to play regular audio media. If I could even get 2 sound cards to work, that'd be ok...one being the "main" pc sound card and the other just to play ripped CD's off the network. These card outputs will serve as inputs to my distributed audio amplifier, and so wouldn't have to be anything more than just stereo.

I know there are cards I can get that have multiple outputs on a single card, like that Delta one....but I want to try out this J. Rivers Media Center 10 software first to see if it actually does what I want before I get a card like that. Also, I'd rather have separate audio outputs on the back of the PC, not some medusa of wiring connections from a single card.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[SonicVanguard]

You won't get the on-board sound to work together with any soundcard. The Live! cards should work together under Windows XP, but since they utilze the same drivers, the system might be confused.

Actually, that Live! card should have twin outputs - front and rear speaker outs. There are two right there.

As far as the J River software, I've had it running using 7 seperate stereo outputs (4 from my Delta card, 2 from my Audigy, and one digital stereo pair from my Delta).

Dave.

[sundevil_1997]

Ya, I enabled the onboard sound, and loaded the drivers...nothing. Ah well, it was a shot.

I've tried telling Windows specifically that the unknown device is a Live!..no luck. Sometimes it's kind of frustrating that Windows is so...limiting. As though it never occured to them that someone might want more than 1 sound card in their system.....

I can try and dig out my old SB AWE32 sound card, but I don't know if that would be sufficiently different enough to fool it. Guess I'll give it a try. any other suggestions?

EDIT: Oops, forgot that old AWE32 was ISA. So much for that idea. Guess I could go and do that "try before you return it" at Best Buy....

[sundevil_1997]

Well, I tried what you suggested. I found in media center where I can set up zones, and I tied zone 1 to the front speaker outputs, and zone 2 to the rear speaker outputs.

Unfortunately, for some reason, I'm getting both zones out the front (main) audio output...and no sound out the rear speakers. I've checked the zone settings tons of time...nothing seems out of place.

The downside with my current card is that I can only use either my digital out, OR the front/rear outputs. I found a nice 5.1 Turtle beach card complete with optical digital out at newegg for only $22, so I think that will be a good addition. Hopefully those two cards are different enough that Windows will allow it!

[SonicVanguard]

Good luck - let us know how it goes.

Dave.