Can folks who are using their PC primarily for playback please chime in?

I want to be able to play back (bit perfect) 16/44.1 material and possible some 24/48, 24/96 and 24/192 recordings I have as well. I also plan to use convolvers (in either Foobar OR Winamp).

Here is the problem. My only "true" ASIO soundcard right now is an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (largely just a cheap way for me to experiment with ASIO until I commit to the high-buck alternatives). When I select the Revo 7.1 ASIO driver in the Thuneau setup something very interesting happens: It selects the 8 analog outputs of the card just fine... but for the INPUT it selects the ANALOG INPUTS!! How does one stream audio directly from KS outputs of Foobar or Winamp? Or does one need to use WDM drivers only? (I know you can't use ASIO ouputs because Allocator uses ASIO for IT'S outputs... that's fine...)

The stranger part yet is that full range sound passes through to outputs 1 and 2 - which I *could* patch back into the allocator and just use channels 3/4, 5/6 and 7/8 for low, mid and high. I did get it working this way - but WOW!! An extra D/A and A/D conversion step?? Not optimal at all!

The allocator is literally amazing and simply intuitive for anyone who has any experience with designing passive crossovers or programming digital/active ones. I just wish there was a little more explanation and help as to how to stream audio into this device in different ways.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Presto

A lot of M-audio cards have the ability of routing one of the outputs to the SPDIF input internally. I see that the Revolution card has a digital out. Can you route it internally to the analog input? If yes, you would have to select SPDIF out as the playback destination in Foobar (make the ASIO output active first and select Revolution as the playback device), the card would make that signal show up on the analog inputs 1 and 2 and VSTShell would get its signal from there. If that option is not in the driver itself, there might be a little mixing application bundled with the card that has some routing options. I'm sorry but I never played with that card.



Well, ASIO cards drivers are often multi-client, which means they can be used by more than one application at a time. Again, I'm not sure about those particular drivers.

If you can not internally route that's not quite unexpected, because the Revolution is sold as a multimedia card as opposed to a recording card.
The M-audio 410 has a better routing and it doesn't cost more. Newegg has it for around $90.00.

At the very least you would want a card with SPDIF input (and at least 6 analog outs) that you can feed digital audio from an external player or from the digital output on your Revolution card.
Just watch out for proper sync settings.
I will try to compile a list of ASIO cards that have the ability of routing audio internally and add it to FAQ section.

Jan

Just to clarify, VSTShell, which hosts the Allocator/Allocator Light/ Arbitrator, can communicate with any ASIO sound card. It sees its ins and outs and can get audio from or send audio to them. The audio streaming part between applications is very complex. Even commercial software products that have this ability don't work 100% of the time.

I got my Foobar player to stream music internally to VSTShell by using a recording application called Reaper. It comes with a virtual ASIO driver called ReaRoute.
Once installed it appears as one of the "sound cards" in Settings.

What you want to do is:
1. In Reaper create a stereo track and select its input as "ReaRoute in 1+2", the output of this track should be "ReaRoute out 3+4".
2. In Foobar select ASIO ReaRoute as the output and assign ReaRoute 1 out to left and Rearoute 2 out to right. This will place the Foobar playback in Reaper's track 1.
3. In VSTShell Settings select Rearoute ASIO as the sound card and in the Routing select Rearoute 3 in as left input and Rearoute 4 as right input.
4. In VSTShell put low, mid and high outputs on Rearoute out 5-10
5. In Reaper create three stereo tracks and source the inputs to them from Rearoute input 5+6, 7+8 , 9+10(it's the audio from Allocator outputs). The outputs of those tracks will be your physical card outputs.
Now, when you record-enable all of your tracks in Reaper and activate the monitoring, the audio will flow from foobar to reaper, get bounced to the allocator inputs and from there hit Reaper again, which will make it appear on the sound card outputs.

*** Disclaimer. This worked OK with my laptop and Presonus Firebox. I tried similar exercise on my desktop computer with RME sound card and was unsuccessful. Maybe I missed something. I didn't spend that much time on it. So, this might or might not work for you right away.

It would be great if Foobar accepted multichannel VST plugins directly. Right now you can use a stereo VST inside Foobar (with a VST adapter), but it crashes with multichannel VST's.

(Edited for numbering mistakes)

WOW Jan! Thanks for the super in-depth responses!

What I imagine is going on is in-line with what you were saying. Being more of a "pro-sumer" card the M-audio Revo has a rather limited routing abilities as far as ASIO goes.

Once I get into a "real" professional multichannel recording/playback ASIO soundcard I am sure that the Allocator and Arbitrator will find a home in my growing collection of DSP based crossovers!

Thanks again - and I will definately try ReaRoute. It sounds a lot like a "generic" version of the ESI "Directwire 3.0" virtual patchbay. I've been looking for something like this for a while now.

Virtual Audio Cable is also a possibility with 8 channels at up to 24/192 per channel. Problem is that it is WDM based and needs a bloody ASIO wrapper to work!

Oh well. Just more stuff to play with!

Thanks for your excellent responses Jan. I'm sure I will be buying the product eventually. Just a few more tests first!

Cheers,
Presto

I never could get Allocator to work on my Revolution 7.1 or Delta Dio cards, although I did get my
Dio card to output a single stereo left and right. They just never would relinquish control of the outs
and let Allocator do its thing. I went with the M-Audio Firewire 410 and it's working great.

I would strongly urge you to get away from using just a media player and convert over to a library
program. The convenience is staggering. They've gotten a bad rap as resource hogs, but since I
went with Media Monkey, I couldn't be happier. It's really low demand, but packed with features.
Sure it takes work to get your library cataloged, but once you do, you could never go back. eg I
can say play me a list of blues and slow rock, that I've rated 4 stars or better, which I haven't
listened to in the past 90 days. Instant sorts, instant searches, etc. I couldn't imagine going back
to the big effort just to find the music I want to hear.