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[simonmason]

I am in the process of setting up a multi-zone installation.  I have an M-Audio in the first zone which I use to drive my home theater using all of the bells and whistles.  I want to add 2-3 more soundcards into the system to drive the whole house audio system.  Currently I am running the first zone of this system off the Realtek onboard audio.  It does a fine job considering I am only passing left and right analog to the whole house controller (it won't take anything else).  Even though it is a 7.1 audio chipset it won't allow me to run multi-zones from it - sound bleeds between the zones.  So what is my best bet to add a couple more zones to the system?  Is it one higher end card and use the various outputs to drive different zones or is it to buy multiple cheaper cards and have them dedicated to each zone?  Thanks.

[Alex B]

I tried this with my Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 sound card. Zone 1 was connected to FL+FR, Zone 2 to C+LFE and Zone 3 to RL + RR. I played loud music in the Zones 2 & 3 and a test track that contains only digital silence in the Zone 1. I monitored Zone 1 with headphones at a very high volume level. I couldn't hear anything except some amplified background noise.

I think the same applies to any high quality soundcard unless the analog outputs can leak after the DA circuits. I used the dedicated headphone output connector in Terratec's front module so the three small 5.1 analog output jacks were not tested.

Since you have a high quality M-Audio card you can try the same test. If the test is successful you could consider e.g. M-Audio Revolution 5.1. It uses a high quality Envy 24 chip and it is reasonably priced. Personally, I would rather buy one high quality card instead of several mediocre cards.

[Chad]

Is there a list of known working multi-zone audio cards? 

- Chad

[music85]

Chad - great question.  Is there a multi-channel sound card? OR media Center,
can you address to have your program read the same sound card if I add 3,4 of the same
card?

[rpalmer68]

The m-audio Delta 100LT can run multiple stereo zones.

I used to run 3 stereo zones plus the SPDIF to my main processor on my old setup.

Richard