[LAU] surround sound with stereo usb DACs?

[Loki Davison]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:20:28AM +1100, Loki Davison wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Bearcat M. Şandor
>> <HomeTheater at feline-soul.com> wrote:
>
>> > I'm slowly building a hi-fi surround system around Trends Audio products. They
>> > have a nice, little, stereo usb DAC. I am really only looking at wanting 4
>> > channels for now. I have something like 8 usb2 ports on this computer so i
>> > have plenty.
>> >
>> > Can i have my player (xine or mplayer or what have you)  decode the signal be
>> > it dolby digital, dts, or the blu-ray formats (ha) into channels and then send
>> > (right and left) out of one usb port and (right rear and left rear) out of a
>> > second usb port to a pair of these stereo DACs.  I assume if i eventually
>> > wanted an 8 channel system i could so the same thing with more channels?
>>
>> Have you thought of buying a decent pci sound card? A PCI solution
>> would mostly likely be better in almost every way.
>> You can choose a level of price quality, and > 8 channel out is easy
>> to find. My echo 3g does that fine, with no arseing around and i would
>> suspect superior sound quality, if not put and DAC you like on the
>> ADAT out... ;)
>
> I'll second that. For any serious surround you want
> matched sample rates and delays, and I doubt very
> much if multiple 2-ch USB interfaces can provide that.
>
> Also the availability of DRM-ed format decoders on
> Linux could be problematic, but I'm not an expert
> on that matter.
>
> Ciao,
>
> --
> FA
>
> Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
> Parma, Italia
>
> O tu, che porte, correndo si ?
> E guerra e morte !
>

I think blu-ray playback works with mplayer/etc. It's just quite
annoying https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

Not as annoying as getting multiple usb cards to work though ;) One
usb card is horrible enough. In my experience usb audio = evil.
PCI/firewire/pcmcia are all ok ;)

Loki