[Consortium] Surround Sound Preamp and Electronic Crossover

[Alan Bromborsky]

I am looking for an all in one linux/alsa (ubuntu for now) media 
solution.  So far I am using kodi to -

     1 - Watch TV (MythTV backend)
     2 - Play video files
     3 - Play music files
     4 - Play CD's and DVD's
     5 - Play commercial Blu Ray disks (MakeMKV + kodi makemkv plugin)
     6 - Browse Internet (Firefox + Chromium + kodi advanced launcher 
plugin)
     7 - Steaming video from internet (Amazon Prime Instant Video + kodo 
plugin for Amazon Prime)

The one thing I cannot do from within kodi yet is play my heritage 
analog sources (turntable and open reel tape deck).  I can play them 
using ecasound and the line input of my Xonar D2 sound card.

Currently my audio output is sent (hdmi) to a surround sound preamp 
(Emotiva UMC-200) and then to a 5.1 speaker system.  I wish to replace 
the preamp with appropriate software running on linux and my Xonar D2 
sound card.  The reason for this is twofold.

     1 - The hdmi audio stream uses lossy compression for anything more 
that two channel sound and I wish to avoid this.
     2 - I wish to implement a bi-amplified electronic crossover for my 
main speakers (the sound card has 7.1 channels so there are enough 
channels for a     5.1 channel system with the bi-amplification) using 
software and my sound card.

The two problems I have are -

     1 - What appropriate software is there to implement the surround 
sound preamp and electronic crossover (I would greatly prefer not to use 
pulseaudio, only alsa and other existing linux applications).
     2 - Kodi has no options to redirect the output audio stream so that 
the surround sound preamp and electronic crossover would have to be 
implemented as a virtual alsa sound card unless one of you can think of 
another option.

Any suggestions and links would be greatly appreciated.