Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Arbiter]

I'm trying to figure this one out with no success, but before i go deeper in this, let me try to explain my setup:

I have an X-Fi Titanium soundcard with 2 speaker setups plugged in:

1)Roccat Kave 5.1 headset speakers via analogue connection (3x 3.5mm jacks)

2)Z-5500 Digital via optical toslink.

My soundcard is set up to playback stereomix using digital output (x-fi titanium specific i believe, that way i can preserve eax effects, crystalizer DSP, room correction etc), which means that the default playback device is the analogue output which then creates my problem.

I have MC set up in dsp options to output at the source number of channels at 32bit bit depdth and 48Khz, playingback at the default sound audio device, which then "redirects" the audio to my digital speakers by using the stereo mix. So far so good, but if i try to playback and ac3/dts or any other multichannel source, all i get is a playback error message. If i manually switch the output to the optical toslink, then everything goes smoothly, But having to switch between the devices all the time just to get multichannel sound is a bit counter-productive.

So what i would like to ask, would be to an option similar to "Output surround sound as dolby digital" in DSP Options, that would redirect just the surround encoded streams straight to the optical output as dolby digital.


Please, Jim?

[rick.ca]

But having to switch between the devices all the time just to get multichannel sound is a bit counter-productive.

Are you using zones? That is, do you mean having to switch between zones is "counter-productive"? I suppose it might seem so if the two sound devices are use for the same listening position. If that's the case, I wonder if a more versatile solution—and one that would work better with the design of the program—would be the ability to tag media with the zone to use, combined with an option to switch to the specified zone on play or not. In most situations, the zone tag could be set with an expression.

[Arbiter]

Are you using zones? That is, do you mean having to switch between zones is "counter-productive"? I suppose it might seem so if the two sound devices are use for the same listening position. If that's the case, I wonder if a more versatile solution—and one that would work better with the design of the program—would be the ability to tag media with the zone to use, combined with an option to switch to the specified zone on play or not. In most situations, the zone tag could be set with an expression.

I'm already using lots of zones to control playback of my other room's speaker setups, so i was trying to avoid that. Having 5 zones setup in mc is good, but more creates clutter My concern is though, i that i like to use the Play Doctor feature throughout my daily music listening time and that includes some of my multi-channel flacs into the playlist and as you can imagine, when such files show up for playback, the whole playback stops or jumps to the next non-surround music file.  But you're right, Rick.ca this is the next best solution to my problem and i think i'll do that till a better solution comes up.

I wonder if a more versatile solution—and one that would work better with the design of the program—would be the ability to tag media with the zone to use, combined with an option to switch to the specified zone on play or not. In most situations, the zone tag could be set with an expression.

That would sure solve my issue and now you made me wonder. I recall seeing an auto-eq plugin for mc a few years ago, that would create an EQ tag for an mp3, switching on different settings etc etc. Could something like that happen for zone switching ?

[rick.ca]

Could something like that happen for zone switching ?

The idea is similar, but changing zones is quite different than changing a DSP setting. I assume a zone change would have to happen before any DSP plugin is involved. In any case, it would be preferable for something like this to be handled by the main program.

I'm already using lots of zones to control playback of my other room's speaker setups...

This presents a wrinkle I didn't consider. Whether or not zone is to be switched would have to depend on the zone currently being used. You wouldn't want files being played in one of your other rooms being switched to your SPDIF zone. I suppose that could be handled by making the "switchable" option zone-specific.

If there's any merit in this idea, it would be in it's flexibility. There are so many different ways zones can be used. It seems such a feature could resolve your issue. But that's of no interest to me—all my media plays in both my zones (my second zone is a SPDIF connection to a HT receiver). But I only watch video in the second zone, so this might be a small convenience—the zone would be switched automatically if I forgot to change it. Others might have other uses. A second tag for zones not to play in might also be useful. We have Access Control, but some might appreciate the ability to tag certain media so it doesn't play certain zones (e.g., kid's room, patio).