HTPC used as AV preamp?

[ellisr63]

Has anyone thought of or are they using their PC as a AV preamp? A friend of mine and I were just thinking of using our PCs as a real HT PC and use the sound card (internal or external) with JRiver MC18 software for the processor.

Is this possible? Any drawbacks? If I went this route I would use a multichannel power amp.

[Dean Roddey]

You can certainly do it. CQC can drive multiple audio outputs from a multi-output card. Something like the M-Audio Delta 1010 provides you with 5 stereo pairs, so you can load a separate CQSL audio player driver instance for each one and have five independent zones.

[ellisr63]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

You can certainly do it. CQC can drive multiple audio outputs from a multi-output card. Something like the M-Audio Delta 1010 provides you with 5 stereo pairs, so you can load a separate CQSL audio player driver instance for each one and have five independent zones.

How much CPU and Ram would I need to be able to stream one 1080p signal with multichannel audio?

[Dean Roddey]

That's video. I was talking about multi-room audio above. I haven't tried setting up a machine to be both an automation server and an HD playback machine. The HD playback can be pretty heavy, and of course you don't want either of them to interfere with each other.

But probably a modern multi-core system should handle it pretty well. You maybe wouldn't want to also have that machine providing support for multiple clients, at least not RIVA type clients maybe, because they may begin to fight each other. But if you are just looking to control playback on that local machine and the actual CQC master server is elsewhere, then it's not an issue either way.

[IVB]

go check out AVSForum, there are a bazillion threads about this very thing.

[ellisr63]

I have a quad core right now that does a good job... I was just wondering how much less I could get by with if I wanted to get a micro pc.

[batwater]

Originally Posted by ellisr63

I have a quad core right now that does a good job... I was just wondering how much less I could get by with if I wanted to get a micro pc.

You might be able to get away with a RaspberryPi running XMBC or Plex. Transcoding would still occur on a backend server where necessary...

I've started looking at alternatives to my SageTV installation for the day when it croaks, hoping that won't be for some time but planning now...

You can also use a Roku as a Plex or XMBC client.

Roku has a new box going through the FCC right now, mystery as to what it is...

-Ben

[IVB]

FYI, I'm using a Roku as an audio source. Their mobile app has a "play on roku" to stream stuff from your phone to the roku, thats pretty cool.