# Using a computer for AV processing



## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

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.


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## kemist (Feb 27, 2008)

ellisr63 said:


> 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.


I've been looking into somewhat related usage, using the HTPC for room correction. I first started looking at JRiver for this and then JRiver with plugins (acourate - $380 and audiolense - $330), which eventually led me to the Dirac Live ($650) suite which I am currently demoing. 

Do you use your HTPC for cablecard at all? If so you probably know that you are still basically stuck with WMC for copy once content, however JRiver seems to be quite nice for everything else. The stock DSP seems to be fairly powerful and i think you can do a lot of basic parametic EQ type tweaking, but looking at more advanced correction in the time domain it seems either acourate or audiolense (maybe others, possibly DRC) need to be used. 

If you use the HTPC as your only source i think you can have it act as a preamp replacement, however, you obviously can't use the HTPC as any type of receiver for other sources. It really depends on what your definition of pre-amp involves.

For my usage scenario I mainly use my htpc to watch cablecard tv and movies (blu ray and dvd). Due to cablecard i am stuck with WMC as a frontend, which isn't terrible, but i can't use JRiver's dsp/convolver for any type of room correction for tv (which is why I am currently looking into Dirac as it filters ALL sound that is processed through the HTPC). I have found that using JRiver as an external player for WMC is very powerful and would let you use JRiver's capabilities at least for movies. If your blurays are ripped to folder structure its a bit of tweaking, but you can get JRiver set up as an external player for WMC and have it auto open and close, very slick. 

Hope some of this is at least relevant to your scenario.


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## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

kemist said:


> I've been looking into somewhat related usage, using the HTPC for room correction. I first started looking at JRiver for this and then JRiver with plugins (acourate - $380 and audiolense - $330), which eventually led me to the Dirac Live ($650) suite which I am currently demoing.
> 
> Do you use your HTPC for cablecard at all? If so you probably know that you are still basically stuck with WMC for copy once content, however JRiver seems to be quite nice for everything else. The stock DSP seems to be fairly powerful and i think you can do a lot of basic parametic EQ type tweaking, but looking at more advanced correction in the time domain it seems either acourate or audiolense (maybe others, possibly DRC) need to be used.
> 
> ...


I would like to move to only having OTA HD and the rest from the internet. If I go this route I think I can eliminate the receiver entirely. I am currently working on getting my CQC software setup for controlling my Home and for playing music, music videos and movies. Everything gets ripped to the HDD for playback. If I can do OTA then I will use a HD tuner card. I use JRiver for my Music Repository, MyMovies for my movie Repository and Zoom for playback controlled by CQC with my own designed templates. Since Zoom allows for multiple zones I just need to get a Delta 10 channel PCI card and I am set (once I get my serial server setup).


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

kemist said:


> I've been looking into somewhat related usage, using the HTPC for room correction. I first started looking at JRiver for this and then JRiver with plugins (acourate - $380 and audiolense - $330), which eventually led me to the Dirac Live ($650) suite which I am currently demoing.


I have a question about Dirac Live. Does it allow you to export an impulse or some filter definition to be used by another program like JRiver, or are you limited to using its virtual soundcard function for equalization?


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## kemist (Feb 27, 2008)

AudiocRaver said:


> I have a question about Dirac Live. Does it allow you to export an impulse or some filter definition to be used by another program like JRiver, or are you limited to using its virtual soundcard function for equalization?


From what i can tell, for better or worse you are stuck with the virtual sound card


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## kemist (Feb 27, 2008)

ellisr63 said:


> I would like to move to only having OTA HD and the rest from the internet. If I go this route I think I can eliminate the receiver entirely. I am currently working on getting my CQC software setup for controlling my Home and for playing music, music videos and movies. Everything gets ripped to the HDD for playback. If I can do OTA then I will use a HD tuner card. I use JRiver for my Music Repository, MyMovies for my movie Repository and Zoom for playback controlled by CQC with my own designed templates. Since Zoom allows for multiple zones I just need to get a Delta 10 channel PCI card and I am set (once I get my serial server setup).


Yeah i think with your usage scenario you should be able to use JRiver for everything (might have to get a subscription for the tv EPG, not sure). JRiver definitely supports regular tuner cards now though and it has a built in 10 foot interface. With that in mind you could use JRiver for all of your room correction duties as well.


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