I have found no way to route audio through my DSP chain before serving the audio to a network client. Is there a way?
I have successfully used the Media Center convolution engine to do a stereo crossover with FIR filters, separating bass from treble, producing 4 channels. The parametric equalizer allows me to map output channels wherever I want. ASIO4ALL allows me to route the treble to one stereo USB DAC and bass to a different stereo USB DAC. All this seems to work after a fashion under both Win 7 and Win XP.
My DACs are connected to an old XP laptop sitting next to my amplifiers. The XP laptop is fed from the Win 7 box as either a library or a DLNA server. If I use simple FIR filters at 44.1, the XP box processes things ok in real time. Any higher bit rates or more complex filters produce dropouts in the audio. The processor can't keep up.
So, if I move the DSP to the more capable Win 7 box and use the XP laptop just to receive the 4 (or 6, or 8 ) channel audio and feed the DACs, all should be well, right? Signalyst's network HQPlayer does something like this; I experimented with HQPlayer, and it worked for me. The problem is that I find HQPlayer's library management atrocious compared to JRiver's. Also, it costs three times as much.
Eventually I'd also like to add digital room correction into the convolution. I think doing all the DSP on the server would be great, but I cannot find a way in Media Center to serve the result to my simple client machine short of using something like a Shoutcast server. Is there a way to accomplish this all within Media Center?