Re: [LAU] surround sound with stereo usb DACs?

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Bearcat M. Şandor
<HomeTheater@email-addr-hidden-soul.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> 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?
>
> Is this feasible? Any drawbacks?
>
> Also, those Trends Audio TA-10.1 are awesome.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> --
> Bearcat M. Şandor
> Bearcat@email-addr-hidden-soul.net
> Jabber: bearcat@email-addr-hidden-soul.net
> MSN: bearcatsandor@email-addr-hidden
> Yahoo: bearcatsandor
> AIM: bearcatmsandor
>
>
>
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I am under the impression that with multiple sound cards you have the
issue of clock drift, the audio channels would eventually go out of
sync, and this would get worse and worse over time. When only one
sound card is being used, the application can sync the video playback
to the audio device, since video speed is not as evident a distortion.
With multiple audio devices with separate clocks, you would most
likely get annoying phasing and comb filter artifacts, if not a
distinct echo. There are firewire cards that can share a clock in
order to eliminate this problem, but I have not heard of USB cards
that share a clock pulse.
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Received on Sat Jan 10 12:15:02 2009