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[cal3713]

Hi all, for the past year I've been using MC to run a music server for a 2 channel audio system (feeding a 2 channel DAC via a Mac Mini).  I'm now integrating video and would like to feed the center channel audio to my TV's R/L speakers (an HDMI audio device) so that vocal clarity is increased while watching blu-rays.

I was roughly able to get this to work by creating a video source zone (playing audio through the 2-channel DAC) and then linking a second zone that used the TV audio device (with the R/L channels both replaced with the center channel audio).  Unfortunately while this worked on the audio side, it also forced my computer to simultaneously generate two copies of the video, which ate up all the Mac's processing power and effectively killed the video. 

So, my question is whether there's a way to only send the center channel audio to this second audio output without having MC also duplicate the video?  Alternatively, could I create one zone with four audio channels and send two of them to one device (my DAC) and two of them to another (my TV)?

Thanks for any suggestions.

- Chris

[Matt]

Welcome.

Zone linking isn't a good choice when *perfect* timing is required.  It's better for distributed audio around the house where *pretty good* synchronization is acceptable (100ms or so of squish).

With that in mind, I think the best choice is to use a multi-channel DAC.  Or to splice the outputs of your existing DAC (although this won't provide you much control).

I've been helping my Dad set up a similar setup at home (5.1 + headphones).  A little on that here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81623.0

[cal3713]

Hmmm... unfortunately I've got an audiophile-grade DAC (and the system's emphasis will always be on music), so getting rid of it isn't really an option, and the TV only accepts audio over the same HDMI connection it shares with the video source, so it looks like I'm out of luck.

In any case, thanks for the quick response.

[J-a-k-e]

EDIT: I seem to have missed the part where mentioned an hdmi device, hopefully this is still of some help to you.

I've had some measured success using asio4all to create a single zone between a 2-channel dac and a multichannel sound card for a 2.1 Channel setup. It's quite fiddly tho as I had to play around with the channel offset in output mode setting and channel ordering in the dsp parametric eq section. The dac runs the two stereo speakers and the sound-card runs a single for channel for the subwoofer. It's not perfect, every so often there's a half second pause in the audio which I may have fixed by increasing the buffer size but otherwise the sub sounds perfectly in sync with the rest of the system.

If you're someone who doesn't mind a bit of tinkering/experimenting give it a go, I can't guarantee the audio will be perfectly in sync with the center channel as I've only tried with bass frequencies which are slightly less dependent here.