Advise please. I am embarking on a new setup. I have tried Audirvana in the past and found it had the best sound quality of the “software players” but ultimately preferred Minimserver direct to my network enabled DAC (Bricasti).
My new setup will have an Exasound multi channel DAC using room correction and digital crossovers which can be implemented in Audirvana using Hang Loose plug-in.
All fine if I want to stream stored music files or Qobuz or any source from inside the computer Audirvana is installed on.
The problem is I want to introduce TV cable as a source for movie and I don’t want a cinema setup. Just 2.1 audio while watching movies is fine with me. I could input digital output of TV to my DAC directly but then I lose all the convolutions.
So it comes down to a resonable priced streamer that would show on the UPNP network taking a digital music input from the TV. Lots of streamer have optical inputs but when you dig into it those inputs are only connected to an onboard DAC. I don’t need a DAC at all as the Mch Exasound will be the renderer via Audirvana.
It seems that you can take a direct input from the HDMI output of the cable box and route the signal via Hang Loose Host, through HLC, out to the exaSound box, not involving Audirvana at all…
Complete flexibility in “wiring” plugins in any way for advanced usage scenarios.
I really must thank you for sharing your ideas. Lip-Sync will be an issue as I am planning to run convolutions on the audio side. I am recreating an 2.1 Cinema Receiver in concept which I had abandoned years ago because of the complexity! The video is just a sidebar for an excellent audio first system.
It is a conundrum if you add too much latency… You would need complex video and audio DSP to bring them back together in sync… Most A/V receivers run this stuff in DSP to get them sync’d properly…
It’ll be a while before I can report back since I’m getting all the hardware together. This is a small part of a bigger project and the multi channel DAC has been purchased.