# Foobar Active Digital Crossover



## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Is anyone using a foobar player and the active digital crossover component? If so have you tried to play DVD's through the crossover? I've heard it can be done with a plugin but not sure which one and how it is done. Please advise!


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Foobar... as in Foobar2000?

That would be interesting, but wouldn't you need an HTPC or otherwise it would tie up your computer every time you wanted to listen to the speakers.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Yes Foobar 2000. You can read about the crossover component. I works extremely well. It does all the crossover filtering in the digital domain before D to A conversion. I already use it for music. It's amazing. I'm just trying to get it to work for movies now. Hence the question.

HTPC? I'm guessing Home Theater PC? I suppose it would tie up your pc. But it would be best to use an older pc for this. It doesn't take a very fast computer.


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## brucek (Apr 11, 2006)

I've never read anywhere that a successful video plugin has been written for foobar. Since music is its specialty, all the third party plugin seem to deal with audio only, and it certainly does that very well.

Myself, I use the kernel streaming plugin with WMD drivers, since my soundcard doesn't support ASIO. Works quite well bypassing the windows kmixer. I also use the digital resampler, since the resampler is poor in my soundcard.

brucek


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

I use an external multichannel soundcard (Maudio 410) It has analog and digital inputs. Do you think it would work to run a dvd player digital out into the digital input on the soundcard, then bring that signal into the foobar player? Any ideas how that could be done? I know you can play a cd directly from the cd drive into foobar. Why not take a pcm signal from dvd player @48khz? I'm not very knowledgeable with plugins.


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## brucek (Apr 11, 2006)

> Do you think it would work to run a dvd player digital out into the digital input on the soundcard


Well, it would be the same limitation that foobar has. You can use foobar to play CD's when they are in a DVD player with no problem, because foobar sees that it's a CD with a PCM output that it will recognize. The DVD wouldn't output PCM unless you were playing a CD (as opposed to a DVD movies encoded AC-3/DTS signal). The digital-in to a soundcard would expect only stereo PCM. It wouldn't accept multi-channel from a DVD. 

brucek


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Do you mean that a DVD played on a dvd player outputting a stereo only signal may work going through foobar- but multichannel would not work?


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## brucek (Apr 11, 2006)

> Do you mean that a DVD played on a dvd player outputting a stereo only signal may work going through foobar


No, because foobar recognizes the DVD flag right away and won't even offer the Rip or Play button - they'll remain grayed out. As soon as you put an Audio CD into the DVD drive, foobar buttons Rip and Play become active. It will simply not play a DVD (unless some new DVD plug-in has been written in the last while). Most people that write plugins for foobar concentrate on music.

brucek


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Okay, do you know anything about using plugins and using the foobar xover in another player like zoom player with the use of a plugin? I heard this was possible but was never able to get it to work.


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## brucek (Apr 11, 2006)

> do you know anything about using plugins and using the foobar xover in another player like zoom player with the use of a plugin?


No, sorry.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Thanks anyway!


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

What soundcard do you have? If you have A soundblaster Live or Audigy anything with the Emu10k or 10k2 chipsets then you can use the KX Project drivers which have a ton of built in features including crossover. I haven't tried them yet but I plan on trying tonight if I have time.

I'm so glad I saw this thread. I am in need of some good subwoofer management and I don't really have $100 to throw down on a Reckhorn B1 or anything any time soon but I do have plenty of extra computers laying around. An Audigy 2 zs soundcard and a willingness to tinker so I'm going to give this a shot tonight. Bonus for subwoofer controll the KX project drivers also have variable phase adjustment 0-360. I think you should be able to use this for any kind of video playback. DVD, DIVX, XVID, YOUTUBE. You might need a fair amount of processing power to do video playback with software crossover, I'm not sure. I'm going to try it on a p3 800 tonight.

I'll let you guys know how it goes, if anybody else has any experience with any of these pc based crossover solutions let us know.

KX Driver Project


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

I have the m audio 410 firewire interface. I've heard that the KX drivers can do this but I don't have the kind of sound card you have. 

Use the room eq wizard to do your in room measurements then use the convolution feature in foobar 2000. You may also be able to use a convolver feature in KX. It works incredible.


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

Yeah granted you can get a soundcard that will work with KX for between $30-$100 ofcourse most active crossovers start at around $100 so at that point its a question of which is actually better.


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

I tried the KX Drivers on my Pentium 3, 800mhz PC with 512 megs of ram using an Audigy2 Zs sound card and it worked quite well. I added a 4th order crossover between the front and rear outputs, mono summed the rears and piped them to my Parasound HCA-1000 which is driving my sub and piped the fronts to an Arcam amplifier that I have on loan for the purposes of testing this bi-amp setup. It sounded great, better than I expected, I was able to change the phase on the sub, change the volume of each channel independantly and change the crossover frequency on the fly and see what it sounded like.

Now I just need to make the PC totally quiet, I need to get a SSDD to replace the hard drive, fanless power supply and fanless heat sink for the CPU. Or maybe I'll just get a Behringer or Reckhorn unit. Tho up to this point everything has been free, I already had the PC and sound card sitting around.

I tried the foobar plugin briefly but I dont think it liked playing with the mixer in the KX Drivers, and they already work so well that I didn't feel any reason to go any further. However I tried using the foobar plugin on my main PC, set an active crossover and listened to the outputs using some headphones and that soundedl ike it was working pretty well too.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

If it's possible put the computer in another room. Or make a special insulated wooden box with channels to circulate the air according to the built in fans. You can cut down the noise substantially. 

Is it possible to use the KX with any soundcard other than yours?


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

I saw your post # 12 above about the other soundcards that work with it. Which is the better of the group? I'm not sure they would measure up to the card I have but I use the 410 for music I would just use this other one for movies. How do you get this all set up to use for movies?


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

I think the audigy 2 cards probably have the best sound, short of the actual EMU brand professional cards. 

As for getting it set up the KX Driver web page and forums are your best resource. I found setting everything up to be fairly intuitive but I guess I tend to be more inclined to figure these things out than most people.

The KX Driver web page does not say if your soundcard is supported or not. I would guess not but you could try installing their drivers and see what happens. If you want to get an old SB live you can get them online for not a whole lot. The Audigy2 Zs is like $99 online.

After you have a compatible sound card simply go in and set up the filters on the desired outputs then as far as I can tell anything you play back goes through the filters. But once again if you want to do anything very complex I would read up on their web page and/or post on their forums about it and see if it will work.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Thanks Bro!


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## DrWho (Sep 27, 2006)

When you say active crossover, what exactly are you referring to? And are you running the analog outputs from your computer soundcard?


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

I mean yeah I'm running analog outputs from the pc to the amplifiers, one plays say, 75hz and down and the other plays 75hz and up. I'm not running any external inputs into the soundcard, but it can be done. I am just using the PC to play back the audio so I do not have to have a cd player or anything else actually going into the pc.

The way I currently have it set up outputs 0/1 (front left and front right analog) send the stereo signal 75hz and up. Outputs 2/3 (rear left and rear right analog) are downmixed to mono, then lowpassed at 75hz. Both of these are 4th order slopes.

I have been pointed to a few other pieces of software that can do the same thing and dont seem to be sound card specific. 

Check these out.
How To, PC as a Crossover.

PC Crossover DSP Software


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Music is stored on the hard drive or played back via cd rom. The signal is broken into sections like tweeter signal, midrange, and bass for each necessary channel. Digital room correction such as what is available on this site is applied as well as other wanted effects. Then the digital to analog conversion is applied and sent out of the computer through the multichannel sound card. For example a three way speaker system would need 6 channels to exit the computer and would only render a stereo setup- no surround. This signal is sent to a multichannel preamp (6 channel) and then to 6 separate amplifiers. The D to A conversion is done only once inside the sound card. (preferably a good one) The sound this yields has to be heard to be believed. (when done properly) Sadly, I still can't figure out a good option for playing back DVD's. Let me know if you figure something out.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

Thanks a lot for this. It seems this will allow play back of dvd going through crossover?


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

The frequency allocator software seems like it would handle dvd playback. However you would have to have a way to delay the video to match the audio. I'm sure there is something out there but I haven't been into video stuff in a while, also yes if you wanted something like 5.1 with each speaker being a 2 way then you would need probably 2 soundcards because I don't know of any out there with more than 6 stereo out puts off of the top of my head. But multiple soundcards is doable as far as I can tell.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

I've been reading up on the links you provided. It looks like it is possible. I think I will have to buy the software though. No big deal. 

I'm pretty sure that zoomplayer will do video delay. Actually, I know they do. This should get me there. Just have to work it out.


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## peterselby7 (Nov 29, 2008)

just wanted to finish this thread by stating that the thuneau does work with movies. I didn't even have to use a video delay. My computer was fast enough. I had to use the optical out from one soundcard to go into the optical on the other sound card. then into the thuneau program doing the crossover functions. This worked perfectly!


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## evilskillit (Oct 7, 2008)

I'm glad you followed up on this old thread. I'm still using the special KXdrivers for my Soundblaster Audigy 2. But its nice to know that if I get around to getting a nicer, higher quality sound card that there are non-soundcard specific alternatives available that people have tried and know work.


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